Other than being insanely hot, Bond Girls are not all of one type. For Your Eyes Only is a chance to experience some of their variety in a collection of five short stories that feature Agent 007.
This was the first Bond book of a new decade, a decade Bond helped define but hardly rated in this soon. For Your Eyes Only is a quiet book that way, and for its lack of baroque storycraft or campy exaggeration. For once, Ian Fleming was writing carefully and on the level; the result is a fine short-story collection that may even please some non-fans.
Two of the five stories here aren’t even spy fiction. For that reason, perhaps, as well as others, they offered Fleming a chance to stretch his writing muscles and engage readers in unexpected ways.
The plots themselves aren’t the strength of this collection; like with the Bond Girls, the power lies in their variety. With this in mind, let’s review the stories:
“From A View To A Kill” – In France, James Bond is called upon to help discover how and why a British Army dispatch rider was shot dead, the valuable intelligence papers he carried missing. Bond meets a fellow British agent, the gorgeous Mary Ann Russell, “the sort of woman who always belonged to someone else,” he muses. Being Bond, of course, this doesn’t hold him back long.
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| A British dispatch rider is murdered in the opening scene of "From A View To A Kill." En route to Saint-Germain in France he encounters another motorcyclist dressed exactly as he is, but carrying a Luger. Image from demons.swallowthesky.org |
The most straightforward espionage tale in this collection, “From A View To A Kill” is more a sketch than a story. According to Wikipedia, Fleming originally planned to use the gist of the story, involving the killing of the dispatch rider and the theft of his intelligence documents, as part of the villain’s backstory in Moonraker. I think Fleming did a sturdy if not spectacular job filling it out.
After an opening scene featuring the dispatch rider’s fate, we meet Bond brooding over his general dislike for France. He eyes a woman who literally stops traffic while she strolls to the café where he is drinking. To his surprise, she sits right down at his table. This is Mary Ann, who introduces herself with the code phrase: “Crash Dive.”
“Crash Dive” is right. Soon Bond is engaged in hand-to-hand combat, stalking, and motorbike chases, while Mary Ann urges him to be more careful. She’s the classic Good Bond Girl, common in lesser Bond stories, but she shows she can do more than look after herself in the end.
Not a great story, in places rather pat, “From A View…” is involving and exciting enough throughout its short length, with gorgeous descriptions of French woods in springtime and some sardonic asides about Allied in-fighting during the Cold War: “How much energy they siphoned off from the common cause, how much fire they directed away from the common enemy!”
“For Your Eyes Only” – When an older British couple are gunned down in their palatial Jamaican estate, James Bond is tasked by his commander M to lay out some personal vengeance. Matters are complicated when the couple’s daughter catches up with Bond en route to his assignment, wanting to settle her own score.
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| By the time the Bond movie producers got around to For Your Eyes Only in 1981, little of the title story remained beyond Judy (renamed Melina) Havelock and her crossbow. Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Your_Eyes_Only_(film) |
From the outset, this is a very different Bond job. The bad guys 007 is tasked to kill (in that exotic and faraway land known as “Vermont”) are not geopolitically important but rather a German ex-Nazi named Hammerstein and his henchmen kicked out of Cuba for being too nasty even for Fulgenico Batista. The killing of the couple, the Havelocks, was done simply because Hammerstein wanted their property for his own.
Bond assures M and us he is fine with being the killer here:
He didn’t know the Havelocks or care who they were. Hammerstein had operated the law of the jungle on two defenseless old people. Since no other law was available, the law of the jungle should be visited upon Hammerstein.
The Bond Girl we meet this time, Judy Havelock, is a Bond Girl with a Grudge as well as a crossbow. Satisfying her need to avenge her parents without compromising his own assignment becomes Bond’s mission.
I like “For Your Eyes Only” a lot even if the mission is more pulp adventure than typical Bond fare. Bond carps about air travel, experiences the North American great outdoors, and offers some amusing random thoughts, like “The best things in America are chipmunks and oyster stew.” That should be a bumper sticker.
“A Quantum Of Solace” – While wrapping up a dull and unpleasant assignment in the Bahamas, Bond is told by the colonial governor about a local scandal that destroyed both a marriage and a career, as well as various acts of mutual domestic cruelty committed along the way.
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| Government House in the Bahamian capital, Nassau, figures prominently in "Quantum Of Solace." Then a British colony, Bahamas became an independent nation in 1973. Image from https://www.viator.com/en-IE/Nassau-attractions/Government-House/d420-a12672. |
By far the oddest story in this collection, just in how much of a thematic departure it represents, “A Quantum Of Solace” is also the most emotionally-gripping piece here. This is surprising given how its characters are presented less as people than as types, related second-hand by a bureaucrat whom Bond prematurely regards as a bore:
“I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a heart being broken, Mr. Bond, broken slowly and deliberately. Well, that’s what was happening to Philip Masters, and it was a dreadful thing to watch.”
“Quantum” hints at an author troubled by his own domestic strife, using this story as a means of identifying the title subject, defined as the minimum amount of concern one can display for a spouse. Once that is gone, it is explained, so is the marriage. Thus we see it fall away.
The Bond Girl presented here is not one Bond deals with himself except (we learn later) in a casual, unknowing way. She’s the classic Bad Bond Girl, except Fleming is less concerned here with blame than with making clear how nobody wins when a couple loses trust in one another.
The framing device Fleming employs is also a treat, apparently something he picked up reading Somerset Maugham. If you don’t mind Bond being a background character in his own tale, you may enjoy this as much as I did, which was quite a lot.
“Risico” – Bond is sent to Italy to make contact with a prize CIA asset, an Italian smuggler who offers information about a rival whom he reports responsible for large shipments of heroin to Great Britain. Investigations lead Bond to Venice and an eventual fiery confrontation.
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| Topol as Colombo (renamed "Columbo") in the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only. His character is largely retained from "Risico" and may be the most successful element of a pretty good Bond movie. Image from https://digitalbits.com/columns/history-legacy--showmanship/for-your-eyes-only-35th/Page-2 |
The best pure adventure story in this collection, “Risico” is full of clever twists, body-rending explosions, and exquisite location detail: “May and October are the best months in Venice. The sun is soft and the nights are cool…And there are fewer people.”
Fantastic characters, too, including a pair of smugglers whose bitter rivalry doesn’t prevent the one from dining at the other’s restaurant, and a femme fatale named Lisl Baum who represents the Exotic Bond Girl.
Lisl is the squeeze of Colombo, the smuggler identified to Bond as the source of the heroin. She likens herself to Greta Garbo, an identification Fleming cements with a thick accent as she alternately entices and pushes Bond away. Ultimately she proves the key for getting to Colombo, himself the deepest riddle in this multi-layered story.
It is said in Wikipedia that Fleming was at a low ebb when he wrote these stories, originally developed as outlines for television shows that never got produced. Yet especially in “Risico,” but the other stories, too, I detected an ebullience rather unique to the normally morbid Fleming.
When Bond befriends someone, for example, we are told: He held out his hand. Bond took it. Suddenly the two men were friends. Bond felt the fact. Bond’s coolness is often emphasized; here you get some warmth.
“The Hildebrand Rarity” – Another non-spy story, but one involving Bond more directly as he takes on a job working on a private yacht. Obnoxious American millionaire Milton Krest is trying to catch an exotic fish off the Seychelles so he can ship it off to the Smithsonian and write off his pleasure cruise as a charitable endeavor. He’s a real prince.
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| Bond explores the undersea world of the Seychelles in "The Hildebrand Rarity," prompting some of Fleming's best prose. Image from https://www.deeperblue.com/top-reasons-to-dive-the-seychelles/ |
This is the weakest story of the five, not a dud but a minor misfire. Fleming hated Americans and gives Krest every obnoxious American foible he could think of, including a Humphrey Bogart lisp and a tendency to talk down to everyone. He beats his wife with a stingray tail he dubs the “Corrector” and even tortures Bond by calling him “Jim”!
The Bond Girl here is the wife, English so you know she’s alright. The twist Fleming gives this story is long in coming but almost makes the reading experience worthwhile. Call her a Mystery Bond Girl, as we never do figure out who she is or what she is about, lending this story an attractive ambiguity that lifts it somewhat from its thin construction.
Even more of a strength is Fleming’s recreation of an underwater paradise where Bond seeks out Krest’s prize, both for the way it explains the unique community of fish and crustaceans with whom Bond finds himself communing, and for the note of tragedy as Krest sets about collecting his specimen with poison and Bond finds himself recoiling at the ensuing holocaust spreading across a coral reef. But why is Bond taking part in this expedition? He’s not on any mission. The padding you typically get in Fleming’s novels, even the good ones, is thick here, too.
The
best thing about For Your Eyes Only is the way it avoids padding most of
the way through. None of these are classic Bond adventures, but most are quite
good, and all add color and verve to Bond’s unique world. Not to mention some
special ladies worth keeping an eye on.
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