As is well known,
the order of the James Bond series of films is totally
different from that of the original novels. And my own fleeting hope
a few years back that with the release of the 2006 Daniel Craig
version of Casino Royale showing a James Bond near the
beginning of his career we might actually have a total reboot that
would indeed remake the movies based on the books in their proper
order did not prove out … but that's a separate story. The point
is that this second James Bond novel was the eighth to be
filmed (“officially” – i.e, not counting the parody production
of Casino Royale from 1967), way down in 1973, more than a
decade into the film series. Another oddity is that with this one we
still haven't gotten to a novel that became a film starring “my”
James Bond, Sean Connery. … But that's a separate story as
well, except that in what few comments I make relating this book to
the movie of the same name I may be referring to Roger Moore.
I actually finished
this book a couple of weeks ago, but all kinds of things got in the
way of me sitting down to write up a post about it except for the
introductory paragraph above. And when I checked my Notes app on my
iPhone where I customarily jot down my thoughts as I read, the page
seems to have disappeared. So I'm winging it from memory from here
on out. And frankly, my memory sucks, but here goes. Mainly I'm
lacking the specific examples and quotations I had intended to use.
 |
| I'm not absolutely sure this is Solitaire – I just wanted to include a picture of Jane Seymour! |
It's another great
read, this time with the action beginning in the United States. “Mr.
Big” is a Harlem crime lord and agent of SMERSH who has seized a
recently discovered treasure trove from a British pirate of the
Caribbean and is smuggling the coins into the US to finance SMERSH's
operations there. Mr. Big has cultivated an identity as a Voodoo god
incarnate to intimidate a vast network of African Americans as well
as a white Caribbean psychic named Solitaire into his service. In
short order Solitaire has defected to Bond but is recaptured by Mr.
Big in Florida. The climax comes in Jamaica, where Mr. Big comes to
a grisly end.
Perhaps the most
jarring element in this novel for the modern reader is the overt
racism that pervades it. African Americans as well as black
Caribbeans are portrayed almost uniformly as childish caricatures who
hold Mr. Big in gibbering superstitious awe. It's quite
embarrassing, really. Perhaps this novel should come with a warning
similar to that included at the beginning of the pulp reprints
published by Sanctum Books (The Shadow, Doc Savage,
etc.): “These stories are works of their time. Consequently, the
text is reprinted intact in his original, historical form, including
occasional out-of-date ethnic and cultural stereotyping.” The film
is characterized by Wikipedia as part of the “blaxploitation” era
of the early 1970s, but frankly the racism inherent in that genre is
nothing compared to that which spilled from the pen of Ian
Fleming here!
In very broad
strokes, once again the stories of the novel and the movie are
similar. But only in very broad strokes. (Again, the late 1950s
newspaper comic strip adaptation of the novel reprinted in The James Bond Omnibus
[ see
my review of Casino Royale ] is very faithful but condensed, as well as toned
down both in sex and violence.) The motivation and goods smuggled by
Mr. Big are drugs in the movie, for one thing. Most interesting to
me, however, is how a couple of the more memorable scenes from this
novel did not make it into the movie of the same name, although they
ended up being used in later James Bond movies. First – and
this surprised me because he has been such an omnipresent character
in the films (although played by even more actors than played James
Bond himself!) – this is where James' CIA friend Felix Leiter is
half-eaten by a shark and left to be found by Bond with the taunting
note, “He disagreed with something that ate
him.” He survives although he loses an arm and a leg. In
the films, however, Leiter would continue as an ally to James Bond
for another decade and a half or so, until 1989's Licence to Kill
(and of course, be “rebooted” hale and whole for 2006's Casino
Royale). Secondly, at the end of the novel, Bond and Solitaire
are dragged behind a ship across a coral reef in shark- and
barracuda-infested waters, a sequence that would remain unfilmed
until four movies later, 1981's For Your Eyes Only.
Cheers!, and Thanks
for reading!
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