Last Bond Novel You Read

It's like the 'sweet tang' line from CR ... you initially wince, then you remind yourself that Fleming was writing in very different times.

Live and Let Die.

Nice little book though my copy is one I got secondhand from 1973 with a LALD film cover and back cover. It's a little odd in that you get the LALD poster with "Ian Fleming's Live and Let Die Starring James Bond 007" on the front. But the odd chapter heading aside (which you wouldn't get today I guess), it's a good read. Like seeing Strangways and Quarrel here. Also how you have what cropped up in FYEO, the keel-hauling scene. The moment Bond kills The Robber by kicking him (in a blind rage) into the shark tank was firmly with Dalton in my head. I found myself chilled when you see Mr Big tell his goons to make sure Leiter gets a good going over.

I think the chapter heading to which you refer has been restored in more recent reprints of LALD Hilly, with a foreword pointing out (much like Moore's making-of diary) that the author was writing in different times to our own.

It is indeed. I had no idea as a kid with my US signet original with the edited chapter. LALD is arguably my favorite Fleming novel.  While it is a bit much to read today I don't think that Fleming was intending to come across in a racist manner outside of the inherent societal differences of the time. I side with Raymond Chandler in that it was astonishing that an Englishman could get so much of the American idiom in dialogue across.

The scenes in the book are done in a way to suggest a "you are there" in what Fleming imagined Harlem to be like in the 50's. Then again I never read the dialogue of the side character written in the vernacular  Fleming put down for them. I've always felt he was trying to get across a sense of how spoken slang and vernacular sounds-so I always in my reading mind picture the voices of Fleming characters and thus felt the dialogue in Harlem wasn't trying to be offensive but trying to give a mental picture of speech.
Then I got to read the original version of the Seventh Avenue chapter and was like...oh..uhhh...oh dear.

So it's a hard thing to discuss. Especially since most have never read the book. I think at times Fleming would throw caution and good judgement to the wind in the sake of a good line such as the "All women love" TSWLM line.

I didn't twig that LALD would have a disclaimer nowadays. It does, as you say Boot, have a Thrilling Cities kind of way of describing NYC. It's not done badly though. LALD is not the worst book out there.

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On my hiatus I read Gardner's Licence to Kill. Subtle differences such as Pam being there when Krest is killed or after Dario dies, she looks over and says something like "was that me?" and Bond remarks: "Let's just say you chewed him out." As remarked in other threads recently, the most glaring exception is how Gardner wraps Fleming's Bond into LTK in that poor Felix is savaged for a second time. To his credit he makes a go of it working ("could lightning strike twice" kind of remark) and even weaves in mentions of Solitaire and Mr Big. Felix is twice invincible surely.

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I then read Forever and a Day. I must say I do rate Horowitz, no one will ever match Fleming but this felt Flemingesque without being Faulks' style of pretention. I won't go all out for spoilers but I pictured Lazenby when Bond first meets Ms Ponsoby (I could imagine a Lazenby style swagger as he follows her into the office) or elsewhere largely as this Bond is not rounded out yet. A nice touch how Horowitz explains the genesis of the 00 section, there being 008 and 0011 aside from Bond and how Bond chooses to keep 007 to honour the fallen agent (it makes some sense, there must've been at least three 008's over the course of the books and films).
Yes, I liked it and I hope he returns for a third.

Thing I remember about reading LALD is being reminded of the pace of the films ... the story fairly rattles along and the action is frequent.

Hilly wrote:

I then read Forever and a Day. I must say I do rate Horowitz, no one will ever match Fleming but this felt Flemingesque without being Faulks' style of pretention. I won't go all out for spoilers but I pictured Lazenby when Bond first meets Ms Ponsoby (I could imagine a Lazenby style swagger as he follows her into the office) or elsewhere largely as this Bond is not rounded out yet. A nice touch how Horowitz explains the genesis of the 00 section, there being 008 and 0011 aside from Bond and how Bond chooses to keep 007 to honour the fallen agent (it makes some sense, there must've been at least three 008's over the course of the books and films).
Yes, I liked it and I hope he returns for a third.

This makes one more enthused to tackle the post Fleming works. Thanks Hilly.

If you've ever read any of his Alex Rider books then you know Horowitz has a massive Fleming fixation. Some of those are quite good even for kid's books and have more inspired setpieces than anything in the modern films. For Bond fans it's more difficult since there are numerous pilferings from Bondian moments.
They're dirt cheap and are fun quick reads once you read his official Bond novels.

I might check out Rider soon enough. I don't honestly mind if there's a third Bond book- there suggests there is gap between Forever and a Day and Casino Royale for a bit more. Bond not being fully rounded out seemed to work well in this book -his reaction to being doused in what he thinks is something else and various other things are quite well.

Heck, I'd love to see a full on modern day set Horowitz book where he just goes full tilt with a new story without the Fleming materials.

That would be quite something. I don't think he needs the Fleming material anyway. Yes linking in Pussy in Trigger Mortis, the TV treatments in both that and FAAD but yes...I think he'd do alright in a modern setting. Maybe go the way of Gardner -continue on from them or the Benson's and give Bond, er, a Saab 9.3...

You Only Live Twice. The film version was enjoyable but obviously, this was more down to earth, brutal and I liked the characterisation of Bond as he cynically compared the East with the West.

The novel is excellent. Certainly in my top 3 Fleming. I agree it's more down to earth than the film, but it's still pretty outlandish.

Another of Fleming's great tragedies. The line about Bond falling into a soft, downy place where there was no more pain--actually the sea off of the Japanese coast--always brings a lump to my throat. I think Fleming did a splendid job of developing the relationship between Bond and Kissy.

Wood's TSWLM. Fleming pastiche-perfect. Film novelization-absolutely.
Does it hold up-uh....sort of. It reads like what it is.

A Fleming pastiche retelling the film in a darker more personally driven do or die tonality. Soooo it works in spurts but doesn't exactly hold up on numerous re-reads. GREAT background detail on Anya, Stromberg has his webbed hands and the fortune amassing backstory is great, Jaws's backstory is perfect and there's a torture scene! Because...why not!

That time of year chaps, On Her Majesty's Secret Service

not much I guess I can add to my previous posts on the topic but just love every page. I'm up to Bond being taken to Draco's hideaway and it's little bits like his resignation letter and the bracketed lines or the car as he chases down Tracy and so on and so forth. Though the film does a good job of closely following the book (right down to the people around the table in the casino), I sometimes wonder if certain scenes would've worked on film. For one, Bond being taken to Draco by the speedboat/Zodiac with Tracy or the proposal scene being in the airport. I'm sure I've said it before but though the barn works in the film, just the image of Bond and Tracy huddled together in the airport, surrounded by people coming and going, the sound of the announcements and Bond's proposal.
I'm not sure if the Swiss SIS agent would have worked on screen but it's a nice touch.

I'd have loved to have seen Bond witnessing Campbell's death realised in the film. I suppose we get a variation of that in SF in Shanghai, despite the security guard not being an agent.

It would have been an interesting scene. It's always good in the book how Bond agonises over Campbell after seeing him and in his room then going off for the last dinner/lunch at the alpine lounge before he escapes. I guess it wouldn't have been suspenseful enough to have Bond winding down the time in his room before sneaking out.

Finished the book, again. I know it's not everyone's favourite book but it is mine. Maybe because of the film or whatever but the little bits and the larger parts seal the deal. How Bond agonises over Campbell, how he ticks off the time until he sneaks out (the description of the Rolex disintegrating), how he's so utterly physically and mentally wrecked by the time he reaches the town and all the way through to the ending.
No matter how often I read it, how you know by know it ends, how it should end, it's still got to be one of the most devastating climaxes to a book I've read.

But along the way I imagined what if they had left OHMSS to say the late 80s/early 90s and it was done by Dalton? Imagine if it was like the film we got...I think, much as I love Lazenby, Dalton would have handled it well.

I regard OHMSS as one of Fleming's definitive classics. Don't know how anybody could gainsay that.

I've heard people say it's one of Fleming's weakest, in part because it's one of his last ones and the 'magic' was said to be gone.

I'm now getting the genesis of getting Dalton to do fresh audio version of the book. Toby Stephens is all well and dandy but Dalters would be great.

I'd probably have OHMSS around the mid point, maybe a little higher, not because of its lack of power, but because I just have a preference to the others, like CR, MR, FRWL and YOLT. But I'd say, TSWLM and TMWTGG aside, they're all definitive classics.

Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang wrote:

I'd probably have OHMSS around the mid point, maybe a little higher, not because of its lack of power, but because I just have a preference to the others, like CR, MR, FRWL and YOLT. But I'd say, TSWLM and TMWTGG aside, they're all definitive classics.

Agree with this. Weak Fleming novels are the exception, not the rule, hence why I'd probably rank OHMSS in the middle of the pack and not mean the slightest bit of ill will by it.

Really, the only novel that desperately lacked oomph was TMWTGG IMO. TSWLM wasn't traditionally Bondian, but it's an entertaining read and leaves a man wanting bacon, scrambled eggs, and black coffee like nothing else!

To my mind, the classics are CR, MR, FRWL, YOLT, OHMSS, and tendentious though it be, TB. The only one I'm not wild about is GF, and even it far surpasses the vast majority of espionage novels out there.

I still need to come round to YOLT. I don't disparage it as such, it's crawling upwards in my mind. I feel that it's the least I should do literary-Bond wise.