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Originally published: 1965 Acquired: December 2020 Read: January 2021 |
This is the last James Bond novel; if I had known it would pick up right from the end of You Only Live Twice, I would have made sure to read it in that order, but oh well.
This isn't Fleming's best work; indeed, having now finished all the novels, I feel pretty certain that he peaked with On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and he should have just stopped there. It would have been a much better final Bond adventure than what came next. Man with the Golden Gun opens okay, with Bond-- after the events of YOLT-- having been brainwashed by the Soviets. But once he's been deprogrammed, he's sent on a mission to Jamaica to kill a thug, which feels way beneath his talents. I think another writer could really do something with this: Bond having to prove to other and himself that he's still the man who he used to be. But Fleming doesn't do that, and this is Just Another Bond Mission.
Fleming always does pretty well with the mechanics of it all: Bond playing detective is good, and Scaramanga is a good villain, and the final action sequence is excellent, and the last line is a sad summation of Bond's character. But the novel has a fatal flaw, which is that Bond could just kill Scaramanga outright early on, and his reason for not doing so is completely unconvincing. Honestly, if Fleming hadn't pointed it out, I might not have noticed it, but he lampshades it, and everything that follows from there is undermined as a result.
I read a James Bond book every four months. Next up in sequence: Quantum of Solace
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