Octopussy – Ian Fleming, 1966 ★★½

Bonds and Sods

The book that unnerved me more than any other, if only because I had to ask a female store clerk if they had it in stock, is this capstone to the career of one of my favorite authors. From the title to the usually hideous cover art, it remains a strange outlier in the Bond oeuvre.

While not a great read, Octopussy is by no means terrible. Ian Fleming was always troubled by the outlandish nature of his character’s adventures, frequently pointing out real espionage is never so thrilling. Keep that in mind when reading this.

In each of the three stories, Bond deals in lower-key activities, seedy forays into the underbelly of humanity involving little to no personal risk. His job is putting an end to his government’s enemies, one way or another, but there is a sense of resigned boredom about it.

In “The Living Daylights” he even blurts out his open discontent to a colleague:

“Think I like this job? Having a Double-O number and so on? I’d be quite happy for you to get me sacked from the Double-O section. Then I could settle down and make a snug nest of papers as an ordinary staffer.”

Author Ian Fleming. Though he was born in London and died not far away in Canterbury, his home may have been Jamaica, where Bond was born. In the title story, Bond pays the island nation a final visit.
Image from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8326707/New-book-reveals-Ian-Fleming-immortalised-lovers-Bond-Girl.html

James Bond was a creature of novels, and later of films, but he also has had a decent run at short fiction, with nine of those tales penned by Ian Fleming. To read the best of these, check out For Your Eyes Only, which captures Bond and Fleming in more vigorous form. The stories you get here are less adventure yarns than vignettes. Still they do explore Bond’s persona in their quieter ways, and resonate to varying degrees.

The oldest, “The Living Daylights” was originally titled “Berlin Escape” when it was published in Argosy and The Sunday Times in 1962. “The Property Of A Lady” was published the next year by Sotheby’s auction house. Finally, “Octopussy” was first published in The Daily Express over a year after Fleming’s death.

“Octopussy”

Revenge is a dish best served cold, even in a tropical clime. Fleming returns Bond one final time to the island where he was written into being, Jamaica, and a rendezvous with some personal history.

"Octopussy," as it appeared for the first time to American readers in a 1966 issue of Playboy magazine. The illustration captures the visual splendor of undersea Jamaica which Fleming describes so well in the book, as well as Bond's way of delivering a cool stare while lighting a cigarette.
Image from https://james-bond-literary.fandom.com/wiki/Octopussy

The story focuses on a retired ex-soldier and his misspent life:

Major Dexter Smyth, O. B. E., Royal Marines (Retd.), was the remains of a once brave and resourceful officer and of a handsome man who had had the sexual run of his teeth all his life, particularly among the Wrens and Wracs and ATS who manned the communications and secretariat of the very special task force to which he had been attached to the end of his service career. Now he was fifty-four and slightly bald, and his belly sagged in his Janzen trunks.

Smyth occupies his time communing with the flora and fauna of a nearby beach, including an octopus which he affectionately dubs “Octopussy.” He plans to feed it a dead scorpionfish and watch to see whether Octopussy survives the meal, so it is established he is not especially likeable.

Out of the blue he is visited by a man named Bond, who has questions about what he did during the war. Pretty soon it turns out Bond already knows the answer: “You know what it’s all about, Smyth.” Smyth spends the rest of the story ruminating on what to do next.

Dexter Smyth's memories take him back to a mountain hike in Kitzbühel, Austria, and a fateful rendezvous just after World War II. The suspense of this section, and its descriptive contrast with Jamaica, give "Octopussy" much of its charge.

Photo by Daniel Wildey from https://www.active-traveller.com/stories/hike-bike-glide-kick-back-in-kitzbuehel-for-an-outstanding-summer-holiday

It is a rather slight story, especially if you are reading it for Bond, who is portrayed here as a shadowy inquisitor with a firm, no-nonsense manner. There is a story here, but it is not Bond’s.

Still, Fleming’s descriptions of undersea Jamaican life are of a piece with his best writing on the same topic in Live And Let Die. Also, one can’t help but feel a tug of something tragically autobiographical in Fleming’s account of an aging bounder facing fast-approaching mortality.

“The Living Daylights”

Bond must help extract a friendly agent making his way back from East Berlin. The Soviets are aware of the agent and plan to kill him before he can get out. To make sure, they bring in a legendary shooter known by the code name “Trigger.” Bond gets the job of making sure the only shot Trigger gets is between the eyes. Bond is armed and ready, but not especially eager about his assignment.

The best story in the collection is also a curiosity for its strain of gritty realism and the depiction of Bond in the role of straight-out assassin. His boss M. tells Bond it’s an ugly job, but then brusquely tells him to get on with it. This, Bond understands, is a front “to take some of the pressure, some of the guilt, off the killer’s shoulders.”

In 1959, photographer Allan Hailstone photographed Berlin as it would have appeared to Bond in "The Living Daylights." Signs of the war were still everywhere, exacerbated by the no-man's land conditions of a divided city. Above, a church in ruins at Gendarmenmarkt. See more of Hailstone's photos here: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/cold-war-berlin-pictures/index.html

In Berlin, we visit a city still ravaged by war, its craters and debris ironically offering the only hope of cover from searchlights in the attempted escape. The more Bond encounters of the people and smells, the less he likes.

James Bond had always found Berlin a glum, inimical city, varnished on the Western side with a brittle veneer of gimcrack polish rather like the chromium trim on American motor cars.

A bitter vibe hangs over this tale, with Bond clashing with the Berlin station chief, Captain Sender, and donning a hazmat-type suit covering his entire body. The stifling mantle reminds him of an executioner’s hood. Meanwhile, he struggles to focus on his mission, distracted by a young blond woman who carries a cello case to a nearby music hall.

“The Living Daylights” portrays Bond in the depths of ennui, coolly professional yet prone to distraction. He seems more questioning of his duty than he was in his 1950s adventures. I would call this the influence of John le Carré and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, except that novel was a year away when Argosy published this. Whatever the origin, the gallows mood and Bond’s fatalism gives this story a visceral sting.

A very good if less remembered Bond film was made from "The Living Daylights," starring Timothy Dalton and incorporating many elements from Fleming's story. Dalton's Bond is a moody and somber agent, though not as beset by the blues as Bond is in the story.
Image from https://facts.net/movie/45-facts-about-the-movie-the-living-daylights/

“The Property Of A Lady”

What does Bond do to earn his salary when he isn’t disarming doomsday machines or bedding a dozen women? Fleming drops hints of a more prosaic life in his novels, but here you get to see him on a case that basically involves him sitting around and watching people.

“The Property Of A Lady” is set at an auction, where a highly-prized Fabergé object d’art is up for sale. The owner, Maria Freudenstein, a known mole for the Russian KGB, is employed by the British Secret Service to channel disinformation. she is being awarded for her bad intelligence by her grateful handlers. Bond is there to catch her boss pushing up the price so he can be exposed and expelled:

“He just won’t know what’s hit him. Nor will the KGB. If I can go to the sale and bowl him out and we’ve got the place covered with cameras, and the auction records, we can get the FO to declare him persona non grata inside a week. And Resident Directors don’t grow on trees. It may be months before the KGB can appoint a replacement.”

As a spy story, “Property Of A Lady” makes no sense. Depriving the Soviets of a station chief seems small potatoes if it reveals to the Russians the exposure of a trusted mole giving them bad intel. Beyond that, Bond has little to do beyond a bit of watching and shadowing a car from a distance.

An auction at Sotheby's in London in 1957 drew a typically large crowd, including Queen Elizabeth II. In "The Property Of A Lady," Fleming effectively captures the drama of high-stakes bidding. He doesn't quite make it work as a spy story, though.
Image from https://www.sothebys.com/en/about/our-history

The point of the story was to profile Sotheby’s, which had commissioned Fleming to help celebrate their legacy. You do get a taste of prime Fleming as detail maven, calling attention to such matters as the way an auctioneer rattles his gavel (holding it by the head, not the handle) and the many subtle ways bidders up the price. But the spy work here is very minimal and drab.

All three stories are quite short, with this one the shortest. In a meatier collection, “Property Of A Lady” might have worked as a change of pace, but as one of three stories its deficiencies are more marked.

There is a fourth story in some versions of this book, “007 In New York,” which was originally part of Fleming’s collection of travel essays, Thrilling Cities. It is even less of a story than the three seen here, more an episode than vignette, and tacking it on exposes the fact that Octopussy is an odds-and-sods type collection.

Fleming was a brilliant author, but his output was uneven across the entirety of his career. I love Bond novels, but there are some I rate lower than Octopussy, including Dr. No, which flaunts its illogical excesses; or Diamonds Are Forever, which involves Bond in a ridiculous mission against cartoon villains. At least Octopussy stays grounded.

A first edition book jacket of Octopussy as published by Jonathan Cape. The symbolism of flies, a heart-shaped shell, and a dead fish by regular Bond jacket illustrator Richard Chopping would not have been lost on Fleming's legion of readers.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopussy_and_The_Living_Daylights

Also, you get in “The Living Daylights” a dark and worthy addition to the canon. “Octopussy,” like “A Quantum Of Solace” from For Your Eyes Only, showcases Fleming’s ability to craft an involving story without Bond at its center. I can see why the executors of Fleming’s estate wanted to get that story out to the public, slight as it is.

“The Property Of A Lady” is not bad, just inconsequential. It doesn’t overstay its welcome while filling in some details on Bond’s 9-to-5 life. We get to see him flirt with the women working in the cipher room, looking at Maria with the knowledge that her being uncovered will probably result in her summary execution and not really caring.

Fleming’s style of writing is noticeably leaner in all three stories in his novels. Was he tired, or honing his more flowery style as he approached his second decade of writing Bond? It may just be that these stories lack the extra polish he bestowed on more major efforts. At least in the case of “The Living Daylights,” that narrative leanness is a plus.

While no neglected classic, Octopussy retains enough of that classic feeling to understand what Anthony Burgess meant about being sorry when he finished reading it. What further Bond tales might have been told had Fleming been blessed with a stronger heart!