Doctor No

Reading the Bond series is always going to have the baggage of the movie series hanging over it, after all it’s the fourth highest grossing franchise of all time!

I think it’s even more noticeable with this entry in the series, as Dr. No was the first to be adapted.
Knowing the different orders of the series feels slightly weird...

Following on from the events of the previous book, Bond is sent to Jamaica in what is deemed an undemanding mission. Bond is tasked with discovering why two MI6 operatives have disappeared.

I really like that Bond has clearly been effected by the previous story, he’s pride has taken a hit. Especially now that he’s been tasked with a mission that has been described as practically like a holiday.

The movie itself sticks pretty faithful to the book with the only slight differences being Dr. No working for a different organisation and the conclusion to that character changes.

You know exactly what your getting with these books, it might not be my favourite - but I’m enjoying working through them in the original publication order.

Things to be wary of in Ian Fleming's Jamaica: tropical fruit, poisonous centipedes, dragons, Edward Scissorhands's grandfather, black crabs, tarantulas, giant squid, and several tons of guano. By the way, the book was published in 1958 and targeted an audience of straight white men in a society rife with all the -isms, which means that if you--Sensitivity Reader #783--can't manage to read it within this context, why not stick to something published yesterday?

Now, where was I? Honeychile Rider is a surprising delight and I could read a whole book about her pre-Bond life in Jamaica. Things fall slightly flat when Doctor No first opens his mouth as his motivations are standard fare for the time (oh, those Russians). Far more interesting is his interest in human pain and endurance, which carries the book to its rather shitty (I mean this very literally) conclusion. My new reading philosophy seems to be to embrace the absurd, and this one definitely fits the bill.

3.5 stars

n  ***2018 Summer of Spies***n

Probably the silliest Bond that I have read so far, with Dr. No being a caricature of a villain, very over-the-top! Fleming must have read some of Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu, another super-villain of the early 20th century (and a character who drew protests from the Chinese embassy and Japanese-Americans for the overt racism).

However, I’ve awarded half a star more than I did for the other Bond novels that I’ve read so far, both for the depiction of Jamaica (a place that Fleming obviously loved) and for the accurate ornithological information. When Fleming describes Jamaica, he does so lovingly—his time spent at his home there, Goldeneye, must have been some of the most peaceful and productive time in his life. Quarrel, Bond’s partner in both this novel and Live and Let Die was based on a Jamaican fisherman who took Fleming shark-fishing.

From reading Andrew Lycett’s biography of Fleming, I know that Fleming was taken on a field trip to a flamingo colony in the Bahamas. This must have started his creative process, beginning with the fictional island of Crab Key, which is also a haven for birds until the advent of the fiendish Dr. No, whose guano-harvesting business is a front for espionage activity. Fleming certainly gets the mangrove habitat and the guano business details right, probably as a result of his travel with two experts on this expedition. Small islands are indeed a haven for colonies of sea birds and their guano has been exploited for fertilizer since the 1800s at least.

I have to also acknowledge Fleming for being willing to change things up on the advice of experts—Bond gets new guns in this story, on the advice of a Bond enthusiast who was also a firearms expert (Geoffrey Boothroyd). As a result, the Armourer in this novel acquires the name Major Boothroyd. Fleming, however, can’t resist one last snark on the matter at the end when Bond cables M: “REGRET MUST AGAIN REQUEST SICK LEAVE STOP SURGEONS REPORT FOLLOWS STOP KINDLY INFORM ARMOURER SMITH AND WESSON INEFFECTIVE AGAINST FLAME-THROWER ENDIT.”

I have ranted about other books where the author has included inaccurate bird information (Dragonfly in Amber, for example), so I will even forgive M for dismissing one of my favourite birds, the Whooping Crane, because of the birdy accuracy of this novel.

Was this when Fleming started to phone it in? I have enjoyed several of the earlier Bond novels, but this one was full of purple prose and even more cringe-inducing racism and sexism than usual. I mean, this is James Bond we're talking about, who was a misogynistic dick even when cleaned up for Hollywood, but Dr. No is pretty much wall-to-wall racial caricatures, along with a vapid sex kitten of a Bond girl. I know, you're saying "What makes her any different from all the other Bond girls?" Well, usually the Bond girls are double-agents or something, or at least they carry a gun, but Honeychile Rider is just a feral blonde who hangs out naked on beaches. But okay, expecting Ian Fleming to write strong female characters is like expecting Jane Austen to write swordfights.

James Bond is sent to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of the Kingston station operatives. After wandering around meeting the colorful locals (there will be something here to offend everyone, from the description of Jamaicans as "lazy children" to every single Chinese person being part of the Yellow Horde), Bond makes his way to Crab Key, an island owned by the mysterious Dr. Julius No. Dr. No turns out to be a half-Chinese megalomaniac with prosthetic hands who brags about how totally evil and powerful he is. He rants about how he's King of the World (actually, he's the king of a tiny guano-covered island), then he taunts Bond and his new squeeze for a while before putting them both into ridiculous deathtraps. When this evil "genius" wants to kill someone, he prefers using poisonous centipedes and giant squid as opposed to, say, a bullet. You just know the ceiling lasers and submarine cars can't be far behind.

Dr. No was still fun in all its racist, sexist, cheesy pulpiness, but it lacked the details and thin veneer of plausibility that earlier novels had, and boy has Fleming's writing gone downhill in this one. Go ahead and read it if you are a Bond fan, but it's definitely not Fleming's best work.

Book six in the James Bond series.

While I appreciate what these books have done for the genre, they are a bit of an eye roll even for their time period.

Ian Fleming, I'm pretty sure that women have never smelt like a combination of freshly mown hay and sweet pepper, I cannot even imagine what that smells like. That's some imagination!

This book is of course filled with the usual racism and misogyny found in the previous books but that aside there's something compelling about these, the ridiculousness of the plot I guess is enough to keep me turning those pages.

Two stars.

The doctor is in; and man, is he angry. Doctor Julius No, a wealthy and reclusive man of mixed Chinese and German descent who runs a guano business on the isolated Caribbean island of Crab Key, is James Bond’s suitably formidable antagonist in Doctor No (1958), the sixth of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels.

Fleming spent much of his career in journalism, but did serve in British Naval Intelligence during the Second World War; and from his time in intelligence work, he could gather how things might go within “Q” branch (quartermaster), and with “M” (the head of MI-6, British foreign intelligence), and, of course, among agents in the field. Fleming lived and wrote in Cold War times, when British and American readers were keenly interested in what might be going on, under the surface of ordinary life, to try to save Western democracy from communist totalitarianism; accordingly, he was in the right literary place at the right historical moment, and he and James Bond cleaned up, all the way to the bank.

What sends Fleming’s iconic secret-agent character to the Caribbean for this particular James Bond novel – even though he’s still recovering from severe injuries incurred during his last mission, as chronicled in the prior Bond novel, From Russia With Love (1957) – is the disappearance of two British intelligence agents in Jamaica: John Strangways and Mary Trueblood. They were dedicated agents, they were good at their work, they were loyal to Great Britain, and they were romantically involved. Spoiler alert: they didn’t just run off to enjoy some jerk chicken and a couple of Red Stripe beers.

It is good to be able to say that, as Bond begins his investigation, he emerges not as merely a gadget-wielding action figure, but rather as a man observant of human character and capable of thinking on his feet. When he arrives in Jamaica and speaks with the island’s acting colonial governor (this is 1958, after all – Jamaican independence is still four years away), and the governor says dismissively that he considers the case closed, Bond understandably asks why.

The Governor said roughly, “Strangways obviously did a bunk with the girl. Unbalanced sort of fellow at the best of times. Some of your – er – colleagues don’t seem to be able to leave women alone.” The Governor clearly included Bond. “Had to bail the chap out of various scandals before now. Doesn’t do the Colony any good, Mr. – er – Bond. Hope your people will be sending us a rather better type of man to take his place. That is,” he added coldly, “if a Regional Control man is really needed here. Personally, I have every confidence in our police.”

Bond smiled sympathetically. “I’ll report your views, sir. I expect my Chief will like to discuss them with the Minister of Defence and the Secretary of State. Naturally, if you would like to take over these extra duties it will be a saving in manpower so far as my Service is concerned. I’m sure the Jamaican Constabulary is most efficient.”

The Governor looked at Bond suspiciously. Perhaps he had better handle this man a bit more carefully. (p. 50)

Assisted by a Jamaican named Quarrel, Bond finds that all the clues he finds are leading him toward Crab Key. While reconnoitering the site, he meets a young woman named Honey, who has her own reasons for being interested in Doctor No’s activities. I’m only going to give you Honey’s first name, because her full name is another of the appalling sexist double entendres in which Fleming liked to indulge when naming the women characters who came to be known as “Bond girls.”

Bond, Honey, and Quarrel soon end up in plenty of trouble on Doctor No’s Crab Key. The island is said to be guarded by a fire-breathing dragon, though the “dragon” is, in fact, simply a tank made up to look like a dragon. My grandparents gave me a “Doctor No Dragon Tank” Corgi toy when I was a small child, and therefore that part of the book brings back fond memories for me. But the way in which Fleming depicts indigenous Jamaicans as credulous people who are easily frightened by the “dragon” stories was disheartening.

A writer of super-spy action thrillers should be able to depict action well, and Fleming succeeds on that count. His prose is appropriately lean and taut in one scene when Bond, Honey, and Quarrel are hiding below the surface of a lagoon, each one breathing, snorkel-style, through a hollow length of bamboo, while Doctor No’s henchmen search for them:

Suddenly Bond cringed. A rubber boot had stepped on his shin and slid off. Would the man think it was a branch? Bond couldn’t chance it. With one surge of motion he hurled himself upwards, spitting out the length of bamboo.

Bond caught a quick impression of a huge body standing almost on top of him, and of a swirling rifle butt. He lifted his left arm to protect his head and felt the jarring blow on his forearm. At the same time, his right hand lunged forward, and as the muzzle of his gun touched the glistening right breast below the hairless aureole he pulled the trigger.

The kick of the explosion, pent up against the man’s body, almost broke Bond’s wrist, but the man crashed back like a chopped tree into the water. Bond caught a glimpse of a huge rent in his side as he went under. (p. 102)

Eventually, Bond and Honey are captured, and are brought before Doctor Julius No. We all know that the archvillain will (a) explain to the hero, in detail, his entire evil plan for world domination, and (b) offer the hero a drink. And yes, one does get to hear Bond ask for “a medium Vodka dry martini – with a slice of lemon peel. Shaken and not stirred, please” (p. 157).

And then there is the zest with which Fleming describes Doctor No.

With his skin “of a deep, almost translucent yellow”, his cheeks “as smooth as fine ivory”, his eyebrows that are “fine and black and sharply upswept as if they had been painted on as make-up for a conjurer”, his “slanting jet black eyes” that are “direct and unblinking and totally devoid of expression”, his mouth that “despite its almost permanent sketch of a smile showed only cruelty and authority” (p. 156), Doctor No is practically a catalogue of Western stereotypes of the “inscrutable” Asian.

As if that’s not enough, Doctor No also has, for hands, “two pairs of steel pincers…on their gleaming stalks” that are “held up for inspection like the hands of a praying mantis.” Fleming sums up Bond’s impressions of his antagonist by writing that “The bizarre, gliding figure looked like a giant venomous worm wrapped in grey tin-foil, and Bond would not have been surprised to see the rest of it trailing slimily along the carpet behind” (p. 156).

Well, goodness gracious me. Sinophobia much, Mr. Fleming? It occurs to me that a scholar of Orientalism, someone like Edward Said, would have a field day with the way in which this Westerner’s description of an Eastern character combines mechanistic and animalistic imagery.

Why the grotesque cultural hostility implicit in Fleming’s description of Doctor No? It occurs to me that in 1957, the Communist regime ruling mainland China still maintained a firmly closed society. Perhaps Fleming’s portrayal of Doctor No reflects Western fears of what was going on behind the Chinese equivalent of Eastern Europe’s “Iron Curtain.”

Whatever the case may be, Doctor No has a very particular set of plans for Bond. In accordance with a time-honoured trope of spy thrillers – one that was cleverly satirized in the Austin Powers spy spoofs – Doctor No is not going to simply kill Bond by having him shot or something. Rather, Bond will be forced to negotiate a series of death-traps that will inflict increasing levels of pain, as Doctor No is curious about how much agony the human body can endure. Perhaps this plot element is part of the reason why a reviewer for Britain’s New Statesman dismissed Doctor No as nothing but “sex, snobbery, and sadism.”

After negotiating one death-trap after another – electric shocks, metal passages that are either freezing cold or burning hot, rooms full of spiders, that sort of thing – Bond is plunged down into the sea off Crab Key. So, then – what is Doctor No’s pièce de résistance, the final element in his plan for engineering Bond’s demise? Sharks, I thought. Surely it is time for some sharks. Sharks with lasers, if we’re lucky.

But no. Instead, behind a wire-mesh fence, Bond sees “two eyes as big as footballs” – the eyes of “the giant squid, the mythical kraken that could pull ships beneath the waves, the fifty-foot-long monster that battled with whales, that weighed a ton or more” (pp. 200-01). Well! Perhaps Fleming had taken the time, four years before, to happen into a London cinema and see Richard Fleischer’s fine 1954 film adaptation of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Giant squids were all the rage for quite some time after that.

Will James Bond end up as lunch for a giant squid? Will Doctor No succeed in his plan to hold the U.S. defense establishment hostage by destroying missiles test-launched from Cape Canaveral? Will Bond never get to enjoy some private time with the beautiful Honey? Not bloody likely. After all, Fleming still has other Bond novels to write.

I realize that I’ve spent a large part of this review setting forth what I don’t like about Doctor No – the elements that I see in it of sexism and misogyny, and of various forms of cultural prejudice as well. Why, then, did this book keep me reading as it did, when I bought it in a bookshop at Heathrow Airport in 2009 and read it on my flight from London back to Philadelphia?

Part of the answer, of course, is that Fleming is a born storyteller who weaves his tales with such energy and verve that even a disapproving reader is likely to want to follow each Bond adventure through to the end – knowing, all the while, that upon finishing the book, they may say to themselves, “I can’t believe I just read that thing.” It is the same sort of guilty-pleasure frisson that people nowadays seem to get out of watching Tiger King, with its real-life characters that seem drawn from the gallery of Bond villains.

Indeed, perhaps it is the very transgressive qualities of Fleming’s novels that accounts for their appeal to a wide variety of readers. Even in the late 1950’s, there were abundant signs that the old social order – one that placed white males at the top of the social hierarchy and consigned everyone else to lower social roles – could no longer be taken for granted, or considered to work for “everyone.”

The murmurings of the late 1950’s became shouting in the 1960’s; and against that social and historical context, Fleming’s novels could provide a world in which an old-fashioned alpha-male “man’s man” did things his own way, without hesitation or apology, and prevailed against dangerous and wicked adversaries – in spite of the disapproval of his superiors at MI-6, and while overcoming the aversion or indifference of a succession of beautiful and initially distant women. Perhaps, in a way, Bond was not so much “licensed to kill,” as licensed to drive away unwelcome elements of a changing world – for the duration of a Bond novel, anyway.

And Fleming was good at his work, and good at influencing world popular culture. The book Doctor No was adapted as Terence Young’s film Dr. No (1962), the first film in the entire series; and the film is remarkably faithful to the source novel. It’s as if the filmmakers don’t yet know how to make a James Bond film! We actually see Bond do some investigating, some cop stuff – interviewing witnesses, chasing down leads – rather than just jumping out of exploding helicopters with a jetpack on his back and all that sort of thing.

As of the year 2020, there have been 26 James Bond movies, grossing $14 billion in adjusted dollars – more, I think, than all the ransoms demanded by all the Bond villains ever – with nine different actors playing the character. That is truly what one learns from reading a James Bond novel: that James Bond is unstoppable – if not as a character, then certainly as a cultural force.

"Smith and Wesson ineffective against flamethrower."
True. But that doesn't prevent James Bond and Honeychile Rider from besting the mad and ruthless Dr. No.

Best to avoid the Bond series if you're squeamish about creepy, hairy, many-legged scritchy things like tarantulas, centipedes, crabs, and scorpions. Also fearsome sea creatures like piranhas, giant squid, and octopi. The bad guys always find diabolical uses for the uncute members of the animal kingdom.

Dr. No has a more comprehensible plot and and slightly more satisfying ending than the other two Bond novels I've read, so it gets an extra star.

These books were written in the 1950s, so brace yourself for some unapologetic racism and sexism. This one takes place in Jamaica, so it also dishes up a hearty dose of superior colonial attitudes.

The reason why Ian Fleming is one of my favorite authors is because he never disappoints his readers with his books. Each one is a masterpiece!