Doctor No – Ian Fleming, 1958 ★½

A Surprising Slog

Doctor No is a transitional novel for the James Bond series. Gone is much of the moral queasiness, realism, and psychological turmoil of earlier 007 stories. In their place: a Walther PPK, vodka martinis shaken not stirred, and a supervillain living in a hidden fortress.

Given all that, Doctor No should be fun. It’s not.

Set in Jamaica, site of earlier series entry Live And Let Die and the last Fleming novel, The Man With The Golden Gun, Doctor No has Bond investigating the disappearance of a British secret agent named Strangways and his attractive secretary. Did they simply run off together, like Bond’s boss M believes?

Bond, who had worked with Strangways in Live And Let Die, thinks not, and seeks out the real story. This leads him to our title character, a six-foot-six bald man with mental pincers for hands, metal contact lenses, and an interest in a tiny island off the Jamaican coast called Crab Key.

No’s got a colorful backstory, to be sure. His hands were ripped off by a tong he embezzled from, which made the mistake of leaving him alive. All he needs are the luge lessons and meat helmet, and he’d be ready for Austin Powers. Now he wants to use his island hideaway to wreak havoc on American rockets for Soviet pay.

Joseph Wiseman played Dr. No in the 1962 movie, showing off his metal hands. His two main passions in the book are guano and toying with NASA telemetry. Image from https://www.scoopnest.com/user/007/1111931069983526912.

Call him a maniac. In true supervillain fashion, No couldn’t agree more: “All the greatest men are maniacs. They are possessed by a mania which drives them forward towards their goal.”

What drives Fleming here is less clear. He must have resented bringing Bond back from death at the end of his last book, for he puts Bond through quite the torture test this time. He is beaten, burned, nearly drowned by an octopus, and even suffers the indignity of being walked all over by a centipede. At one point, Bond must negotiate a special obstacle course Doctor No sets up, “a wounded caterpillar crawling up a waste pipe towards the plug-hole of a bath.”

Bond approaches all this with resignation: “If it’s a trap we’re in it. There’s nothing we can do now but eat the cheese.”

The storycraft itself has a tired quality about it, jaded overkill for the sake of pure effect. Doctor No and his henchmen are too heavy-handed to be believable. His way of staking a claim on Crab Key is to kill anyone who ventures ashore, including people working for the Audubon Society, which actually owns property there.

A Walther PPK is pushed on a reluctant Bond early in Doctor No. Explains armorer Major Boothroyd: "I like its light trigger pull and the extension spur of the magazine gives a grip that should suit 007." But Bond never actually uses what would become his signature pistol in this book. Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walther_PP.

Because Strangways began to investigate this, Doctor No has him and a secretary killed and hidden, which does offer an effective opening sequence but also a question about whether a diabolic genius would employ such heavy methods as torching Strangways’ office. Yet when M hands Bond the assignment, he considers it a soft one. “Absolutely no trace of foul play,” he declares.

Does arson count? Apparently not.

Doctor No became the first Bond movie adapted by Albert Broccoli and Harry Saltzman for a franchise that continues to this day; what it lacks in energy it makes up for in décor. Ken Adam, the set designer of the 007 movies, would be right at home in Doctor No’s underwater lair:

Bond looked upwards. A yard below the ceiling, small waves were lapping at the glass. Above the waves was a strip of greyer blue-black, dotted with sparks of light. The outlines of Orion were the clue. This was not an aquarium. This was the sea itself and the night sky. The whole of one side of the room was made of armoured glass. They were under the sea, looking straight into its heart, twenty feet down.

Ian Fleming (on right) consults with the man who put him in a higher tax bracket, Sean Connery, seen here between takes playing James Bond in 1962's Doctor No. Connery gave Bond a rough polish that made him easier to root for (and his mistakes easier to overlook) than in the novels. Image from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ian-Fleming.

I’m not sure Sean Connery would feel as cozy playing the Bond presented here. Bond is at his most inept in Doctor No, which is really saying something considering his past blunders.

Bond starts the adventure cursing himself for not operating as much in secret as his job title would imply, paying a call at the Governor’s House (Jamaica was until 1962 still a British colony) under his own name. It’s a small fluff, but a costly loss of initiative as Doctor No wastes no time after that trying to kill Bond.

Mistakes pile up from there. Because Bond is still living down the end of his last assignment, which nearly ended with a poison kick from Rosa Klebb, he works with too much ego here:

He admitted to himself that this adventure excited him. It had the right ingredients – physical exertion, mystery, and a ruthless enemy. He had a good companion. His cause was just. There might also be the satisfaction of throwing the “holiday in the sun” back in M’s teeth. That had rankled. Bond didn’t like being coddled.

James Bond's cover in Jamaica is that he is an ornithologist interested in a Jamaican bird, the roseate spoonbill (above). This may be Fleming's nod to the real-life inspiration for Bond's name, author James Bond of Birds Of The West Indies, a book which Fleming owned. Image from https://flemingsbond.com/roseate-spoonbill/. 

So when Bond finds himself hunted on Crab Key by an armored vehicle that shoots flame, he decides not to sail back on the boat he arrived on, enabling the death of a friend and nearly ending Bond’s assignment and career. He’s such a moron you wonder how he lasts as long as he does – then you consider the opposition.

Doctor No is the kind of supervillain who kills nature-preserve employees and torches the nests of prized roseate spoonbills because he doesn’t want anyone finding out about his top-secret sabotage operation for the Soviets. Granted it’s the 1950s and PETA isn’t a thing yet, but you’d think a guy would find another island before risking that kind of attention. Then when Bond shows up, No decides to kill him, because killing government operatives is the best way to avoid suspicion.

It’s a Bond novel, so I try to roll with the implausibilities, even when served up with annoying dollops of patronizing racism. I don’t like trying long-dead writers for woke crimes, but his white elitism is so blatant it detracts from the story.

One British official explains the childish nature of the locals makes self-government a hard idea to imagine in practice: “My dear chap, there’s far more colour problem between the straight-haired and the curly-haired Jamaicans than there is between me and my black cook.”

A 1965 Signet paperback edition of Doctor No. Even though they shortchange the actual illustration to a small center area of the cover, I love the look and ominous vibe of the vintage Signets. Image from https://www.amazon.com/Doctor-No-Fleming-Ian/dp/B009NNG16C.

The real nasties in the book are who Fleming indelicately calls the “Chigroes,” half-Asian, half-black residents of Jamaica who provide No with muscle and local reach. Like their boss, they aren’t into subtlety. “He’ll get you, you bastards!” one of his not-so-undercover operatives screams at Bond and his local helper Quarrel early on in their investigations, while they still work with the theory Strangways vamoosed.

In fact, Fleming’s sins of omission are at times as annoying as anything he writes. Strangways’ disappearance offers a mystery worth investigating, but all Bond does is give a couple of vagrants his registered vehicle to drive around as a misdirection ploy, resulting in the unfortunate pair being killed in a suspicious “accident” no one bothers to investigate.

Bond is careful enough to inspect a fruit basket in his hotel room, spotting discolored injection marks in each piece, but after sending it out for analysis does little else about it. Rather than examine Strangways’ burned office for clues of what happened, he takes in the scenery and talks with local officials about life on the island in general.  

For some reason, the title of the novel has changed in later editions, from Doctor No to the abbreviated Dr. No, as with this 2012 paperback. The movie always used the abbreviation, so perhaps that is more popular now. Image from https://www.amazon.com/Dr-James-Bond-Ian-Fleming/dp/1612185495.

Bond’s expedition to Crab Key, which amounts to the second half of the novel, should be a highlight, but devolves into a static waiting game. He and Quarrel discover the flame-throwing ATV and also a beautiful woman named Honeychile Rider who picks up valuable shells on Crab Key. She does this naked, which impresses Bond more than a little:

It was a serious face and the jawline was determined – the face of a girl who fends for herself. And once, reflected Bond, she had failed to fend. For the nose was badly broken, smashed crooked like a boxer’s. Bond stiffened with revolt at what had happened to this supremely beautiful girl. No wonder this was her shame and not the beautiful firm breasts that now jutted towards him without concealment.

Honey becomes an important character, but other than her torso, she’s not well-developed. Fleming mostly uses her as a sop for male fantasies. That isn’t a bad thing, just very limiting at a time he needs to move his pokey plot into another gear.

 Honey Rider (Ursula Andress) arrives in the 1962 movie, frightfully overdressed. She's naked in the book, described emerging from the water like Botticelli's Venus. In the novel, Honey shows surprising resourcefulness, though she's regulated to damsel-in-distress most of the time. Image from https://www.german-way.com/notable-people/featured-bios/ursula-andress/

No’s business with the Russians is just a sideline as he is most interested in guano – bird dung, a valuable source of fertilizer but hardly the line of work you expect from a Bond supervillain. No’s affection for it is so great he can’t bear to be away from its harvesting long – even when he could instead watch Bond’s progress on that lethal obstacle course he designed.

Do you think such laxity might come back to bite Doctor No?

Good points include some decent descriptive mileage regarding the mangrove swamps of Crab Key and the social life of Kingston; both the rich whites who live in the affected splendor of the Queen’s Club, “which for fifty years has boasted the power and frequency of its blackballs,” and the blacks who play calypso at scenic outdoor cafes. Fleming loved Jamaica, and however blinkered his mindset, his vivid word portraits breathe life into the lethargic story.

The movie Doctor No was what launched the whole 007 movie phenomenon; you can see those cinematic qualities coming into play here in crisp, recognizable form. The result is odd: Doctor No is a novelistic low point that ironically became a franchise high point thanks to the movie (which has its own issues but reworked both plot and villain in subtle, effective ways). If you are reading the books in order like I am, you have no choice but to read it, but if you are like me, you will find it a surprisingly tedious chore.