“Devil May Care” Book Review

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I love James Bond novels, well, the James Bond novels written by Ian Fleming. A handful of other authors — Kingsley Amis, John Gardner and now Sebastian Faulks — have been commissioned to write additional adventures for 007 over the years. Kingsley Amis wrote only one book, 1968’s “Colonel Sun.” In the ’80s and ’90s, Gardner wrote over a dozen Bond novels. I’m about halfway through them. They’re fairly interchangable. Nobody does it better than Fleming.

To commemorate Ian Fleming’s 100th birthday last month, the 36th(!) Bond novel was published, “Devil May Care,” written by Sebastian Faulks as Ian Fleming. I’m not sure how one writes “as” someone else, short of committing plagarism. Maybe Faulks wore an Ian Fleming costume or had a seance and allowed the spirit of Fleming to possess him; in the latter event, I’m not sure how the royalties will be paid out.

Of the authors I’ve read that have tried to channel Fleming, I think Faulks is probably the most successful. “Devil May Care” might suffer from a slow buildup and more than a little borrowing from Fleming’s cache of villains (Dr. Julius Gorner cheats at tennis, just as Hugo Drax did at cards and Goldfinger at golf). But once Bond is sent to Iran — or Persia as it was in 1967 when the novel is set — the book ramps up and becomes a worthy entry in the series.

Bond hasn’t fully recouperated from the events of “The Man With a Golden Gun” at the beginning of “Devil May Care.” He’s on extended leave and mulling over the idea of resigning from the double-O section. He’s smoking less and not drinking at all. He even turns down the advances of a married woman he meets in Italy. It’s enough to make you double-check the cover of the book just to make sure this is in fact a James Bond title.

M summons Bond back to London and puts him on the trail of Dr. Gorner — a former soldier for the Nazis then the Russians (flip-flopper!) during World War II, who’s since become a giant in the pharmeceutical industry. He also has a fairly distinctive malformity, a monkey’s paw for a left hand, thus making him evil. And every Bond villian worth his salt is incomplete without an even more gruesome henchperson. This time it’s Chagrin, a fellow from Indo-China, experimented on by the Russians to improve upon his inherent psychosis. Now he doesn’t register pain, the top half his face is frozen in casual indifference and he wears a French Foreign Legion kepi to cover his nasty surgical scars. His hobbies include cutting out children’s tongues and driving chopsticks into drug addicts’ ears.

The Bond Girl, Scarlett Papava, is a fairly stock ally. A brunette trying to rescue her twin sister Poppy from Gorner’s drug lab in the Middle-East, Scarlett has more to her than meets the eye. I should’ve seen the twist involving her character earlier on. But she wasn’t interesting enough for me to really care. I partly blame Bond for not picking up on it either.

Gorner’s plot for destroying the West, flooding the market with drugs, is uncharacteristically abandonded at the midpoint for something more cinematic. His designs for making London the target of a nuclear attack by the Russians are somewhat plausible, but his original drug plot — what draws Bond into his web to begin with — is classic Fleming. The idea of a Bond villain tossing off his initial scheme and trading up for something bigger and badder is sort of clever. However, I think Faulks just didn’t believe today’s readers would be satisfied with Bond doing anything short of preventing WWIII…again.

The book still manages to entertain despite its flaws. Faulks adopts Fleming’s lovingly detailed descriptions of fine food, fine wine and fine women. He brings back the vulnerable Bond, the self-doubting and wounded Bond. Bond isn’t invincible like he is in many of the films and equipped with an arsenal of pocket-sized deus ex machinas to effect his escape from any given deathtrap. Bond’s only gadget in the book is a shard of glass he pulls from his cheek after he wrecks a truck.

I’d like to see Faulks write more Bond entires. It took Fleming a couple of books to find his style, and it wasn’t until “Dr. No,” the sixth book in the series, that he wrote what I consider to be the best of them all. Nobody does it better than Fleming. But that doesn’t mean I’d like to see someone else come close.

-Brad Lohan (as Ian Fleming)

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