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.

The Man With The Golden Gun – Ian Fleming, 1965 ★½

A Goodbye that Still Stings

Ian Fleming should have been taking his ease in 1964. The year before saw him endure a nasty lawsuit and nastier heart attack. Just relax and enjoy as his creation James Bond cemented his status as moviedom’s most famous superspy in Goldfinger, opening in theaters that September.

Fleming always wanted more. So he launched a new book project, not about Bond but a flying car. The “Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang” series became another lasting success, but one Fleming would never see to publication, as he died in August.

It was the sort of self-destructive impulse in pursuit of duty that Bond himself obeys in the other project Fleming allowed to consume his last year of life: the 13^th and penultimate Bond book.

You Only Live Twice – Ian Fleming, 1964 ★★★½

Death in the Face

Death has a way of losing its celebrity and becoming a less obtrusive if ever-annoying companion as one ages. It seeps into everything, closing off future hopes and replacing them with grim resignation.

Ian Fleming was nearing the end of his life when he wrote You Only Live Twice; you feel that from the way it reads. There is a sense of wan completion in Bond’s journey this time around. Frantic pace and knife’s-edge tension is replaced by philosophic contemplation.

And yet despite a sepulchral tone, this manages to be quite a gripping spy thriller most of the way through. For over half of it, Bond is immersed in an unusually realistic and low-key diplomatic mission involving a crash course in Japanese culture. Just as you settle into that, you are plunged into an utterly phantasmagoric personal mission involving one of the most bizarre yet familiar villains of the 007 canon.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – Ian Fleming, 1963 ★★★★

The Quality of Being Human

Is James Bond a good spy? Is he at best competent, and often quite inept? Does a dumber 007 make for a better reading experience?

These questions kept popping into my head as I read again this brilliant, poignant but somewhat perplexing novel, the one in which Bond goes head-to-head with the greatest villain of the series and becomes the willing prisoner of a woman he loves.

For action and suspense, it is hard to beat On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, though it works very well as an emotionally driven character piece, too. Ian Fleming sets up one of his most brilliant plots, executed with violence and cunning. Yet when it is over, the resolution of Ernst Blofeld’s latest fiendish scheme is not what you are left thinking about.

The Spy Who Loved Me – Ian Fleming, 1962 ★★★½

 Living Dangerously

Writing popular fiction can be a dangerous art. Keep too close to a successful formula, and you risk becoming stale and predictable, and eventually less popular. Stray from what you typically do and you risk losing your audience even faster than by going stale.

In writing his ninth James Bond novel, Ian Fleming went with option #2.  He soon regretted it.

Both his regular readers and many critics were put off by a Bond book where 007 himself only appears in the last third. Who is this Vivienne Michel and why the concentration on the sordid details of her love life? And where did all the globetrotting spy stuff go?

Thunderball – Ian Fleming, 1961 ★★★½

Bond Discovers Health Food...and SPECTRE

Why do people say movie adaptations are never as good as the books? Bond movies are nearly always better than the books, even when the books are pretty good. Take this one, Thunderball.

Ian Fleming sets James Bond up against a quicksilver plot and a new villain to take the place of the tired Soviet Union. Just in time for the new decade, 007 is also challenged by an independent Bond woman. The undersea descriptions are immersive, the core mystery developed in an ingenious manner that creeps up on a reader who may think they know what is going to happen.

Thunderball is for the most part great fun, keeping the outlandish vibe of Bond novels since Fleming failed to kill 007 in From Russia, With Love but grounding it somewhat more firmly in reality. Add to it the debut of Bond’s arch-nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld, and you have a second life for a series that lasted the rest of Fleming’s lifetime – and beyond.

Thrilling Cities – Ian Fleming, 1963 ★★★

Come Fly with Me

Air travel was fairly new in 1959; many still lacked the nerve or the money to go up in a plane. What better way to promote round-the-world adventure than in the company of the man who invented James Bond?

This may be the idea behind this pleasant curiosity and footnote in the career of Ian Fleming, as envisioned first by the editors of the Sunday Times and, years later, the publisher of the Bond thrillers. The title hastens to assure you some really exciting places await you inside.

Do they?

For Your Eyes Only – Ian Fleming, 1960 ★★★½

Cherchez la femme

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.

Goldfinger – Ian Fleming, 1959 ★★★

Cool but Dumb

James Bond got much cooler, and a bit dumber, with his seventh novel. Subtlety got ejected as pure escapism took the wheel, delivered with gusto and without apology.

It’s not Ian Fleming’s best novel, or even a particularly good one. But Goldfinger is closer in spirit to what we think of today as a 007 adventure, an adrenaline-charged thriller with a campy twist. It also became the springboard for the most culturally important of Bond films, unleashing superhuman Korean henchmen, gorgeous lesbian gangsters, and a plot to steal billions of dollars in pure gold from Fort Knox.

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.

From Russia, With Love – Ian Fleming, 1957 ★★★★½

Saying it with Roses

The novel that put James Bond on the cultural map holds up amazingly well. Other 007 books feature better remembered villains or Bond girls; From Russia, With Love gives you the best Bond story and, for maybe the first and last time, a fully invested author.

What can you say about a Bond novel that holds our interest for 100 pages while keeping the man himself offstage? I’m used to haphazard plotting in other Bond books; here the story builds effortlessly and ruthlessly from strength to strength until one is ready for Bond like a corrida is ready for the matador.

Diamonds Are Forever – Ian Fleming, 1956 ★½

Travelogue in Search of a Plot

Ian Fleming was a brilliant travel writer, but he had to contort his travelogues into spy stories to get anyone to pay attention. Nowhere is this case better made than in Diamonds Are Forever.

This fourth installment in the James Bond series puts Bond on the trail of a diamond-smuggling operation, hopping from England to the Eastern United States to the Western United States to what was then still French Guinea in pursuit of gangsters and their fetching gem moll, Tiffany Case.

Moonraker – Ian Fleming, 1955 ★★

No Nukes, No Nookie

Which makes the bigger splash in a James Bond story: A nuclear explosion or a Bond girl that just says no to sex with 007? Moonraker gives you the chance to find out.

As a reading experience, Ian Fleming delivers some marvelous prose; the early glimpses of Bond’s everyday life deepen my appreciation for the character and his world. As a novel, it is one of the weakest Fleming Bond stories; a ridiculous scheme, contrivances galore, and a sloppy, rushed ending.

Live And Let Die – Ian Fleming, 1954 ★★★½

A Second Debut for 007

While it is the second James Bond novel, Live And Let Die feels like a kind of debut, introducing what generations of readers and movie fans expect from a James Bond adventure yarn.

The first of Ian Fleming’s novels, Casino Royale, kept Bond penned up in a single locale playing cards, not physically hurting anyone. Live And Let Die gives us a more peripatetic and lethal hero, journeying from London to Harlem to Florida and finally Jamaica and leaving a trail of death behind. 

Casino Royale – Ian Fleming, 1953 ★★★★½

Giving Birth to Bond

Did any cultural icon ever make an entrance as brilliant and yet as strange as Bond James Bond?

For a long time I had an odd relationship to Casino Royale. I was not alone. It took over a half-century for the movies to get it right, long after putting on screen nearly everything else Ian Fleming wrote, even the kiddie book about that car.

Icebreaker – John Gardner, 1983 [No Stars]

007 Faces His Greatest Threat...a Sneering Novelist

Who in their right minds hires a novelist to flip off his audience?

In the early 1980s, the answer to the above question was Glidrose Publications Ltd. A production company owned by the family of Ian Fleming, Glidrose held literary title to Fleming’s famous fictional spy, James Bond. To carry on the Bond novels after Fleming’s death, they contracted a novelist, one John Gardner. By the time of his third Bond novel, Icebreaker, it had become clear Gardner not only disliked James Bond the character, but resented his audience, too.

Goldeneye: Where Bond Was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica– Matthew Parker, 2015 ★★★★

007 in Jamaica

[This review comes from a copy of the book provided by its publisher, Pegasus Press.]

The origins of James Bond are fairly murky, being as he was the product of a Scottish father, a Swiss mother, and a peripatetic upbringing only dimly illumined by the Bond novels Ian Fleming wrote.

Much more is known about the origins of Bond as fictional construct; this new book by Matthew Parker puts it all together by paying special attention to the tumultuous tropical setting where 007 was conceived and nurtured.

License Renewed – John Gardner, 1981 ★★½

007 Greets the 1980s

I remember my excitement seeing the blurb in Time magazine back in 1981. Glidrose Publications, Ltd., owners of the literary copyright of the world's most famous fictional spy, had granted permission for a brand-new series of James Bond novels.

But was James Bond ready for the eighties? John Gardner's initial updating of 007 kinda, sorta, sometimes works.