On Her Majesty's Secret Service

After watching the James Bond movie 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' last week, I thought I will read the book and compare. Finished reading it today. The basic story goes like this - Bond is driving through some exotic mountain road in Europe. A beautiful woman driving a fast car passes him. Bond tries to catch up with her but he can't. Later he discovers that she is trying to commit suicide. He saves her. But she doesn't thank him. She seems to be a troubled soul. Then Bond is kidnapped by some bad guys. It turns out that the kidnapper is a godfather style head of mafia. He is also the beautiful woman Tracy's father. He asks Bond to marry her. Bond says he will think about it. Meanwhile Bond is in search of his nemesis, the villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who wants world domination. Bond ends up in the Alps in a research clinic, where Blofeld seems to be the research doctor. There are many beautiful young women in the clinic. They are all attracted to Bond. And then blah, blah, blah. You have read the book or watch the movie to find out more.

So how does the book compare to the movie? One of my friends says that Bond movies are better than the books. I had mixed opinions on that, but with the evidence of this book, I have to agree. The movie stays faithful to the book mostly, but in many cases the scenes are rearranged in the movie to create a better dramatic effect. For example, in the first scene, the movie improves upon the book. Also, I loved the movie Tracy more than the book Tracy. It helped that Diana Rigg delivered a charming, brilliant performance as Tracy. Also the skiing scenes are breathtaking and spectacular in the movie. And so is the avalanche scene - amazingly spectacular. To be fair to the book, the skiing scenes are pretty well described there - they are very informative. The relationship between Moneypenny and Bond is beautifully depicted in the movie. Moneypenny is missing in the novel. The things where the book scores over the movie are these - in the book, Bond feels like a real person. He is not the cool, stylish Bond of the movie. For example, in the book, when Bond tries to escape from the bad guys by skiing down the Alpine slope, he is not sure whether it is going to work, because he hasn't done skiing in a long time and he is not great at it. In the movie, Bond just puts on his skis and starts skiing down the Alpine slope like he owns the place and it feels like we are watching a gold medallist in the winter Olympics in action here. The movie also has other flaws - Blofeld starts as an interesting villain and ends up becoming a cartoon villain. Inspite of its flaws, I liked the movie more - the scenes are more dramatic and the scriptwriters have taken liberty with the book in mostly the right ways.

I thought Ian Fleming's prose was good, but it is passable at best. If I compare Fleming with his Scottish contemporary Alistair MacLean, I feel MacLean was better. MacLean wrote better first pages - his first pages were literary, humorous and spectacular - his prose was gorgeous, he told better stories and the drama and suspense and surprises in his books were better. MacLean's 'When Eight Bells Toll' is better than any Bond novel. I have read it atleast ten times. If you like spy novels, I will recommend highly that you read that. Fleming's Bond novels are predictable with passable prose. His formula of the handsome British spy who drives fast cars, drinks martinis, gambles in casinos, charms beautiful women, gets chased by bad guys by cars and boats and planes through exotic locales like Europe and Florida and the Bahamas and how he always wins in the end with the beautiful woman in tow - this must have been irresistible to the readers and movie makers of his time. It is formulaic, predictable, escapist, but it is the kind of reading you might enjoy on the beach on a hot summer day.

Some of the things (mostly useless) that I learnt from the book :

(1) "worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due"
(2) Bond uses Pinaud Elixir, the prince among shampoos
(3) "since Victorian days it has been assumed that ladies do not gamble"
(4) "It was true that this Blofeld had held up Britain and America to ransom by his illegal possession of atomic weapons. But this could not be considered a crime under the laws of Switzerland, and particularly not having regard to Article 47B of the banking laws."
(5) Bond's father was Scot and his mother was Swiss! (Take that, English folks!)
(6) 'The World is Not Enough' is the motto engraved in the Bond family's coat of arms. This Bond family might be related to our James Bond, Spy.
(7) Types of British accents - "the broad vowels of Lancashire, the lilt of Wales, the burr of Scotland, the adenoids of refined Cockney"
(8) There are three kinds of peaks in Switzerland - the piz, the alp and the berg. Piz is the smallest, alp is the middle one, berg is the tallest. Sometimes alp and berg are used interchangeably.
(9) Ursula Andress, who played Honey Rider in the first Bond movie 'Dr.No', makes an appearance in this story.
(10) "What did one do when the avalanche hit? There was only one rule. Get your hands to your boots and grip your ankles. Then, if you were buried, there was some hope of undoing your skis, being able, perhaps, to burrow your way to the surface..."
(11) Bond's boss M is an amateur painter as this passage shows - "M had one of the stock bachelor's hobbies. He painted in water-colour. He painted only the wild orchids of England, in the meticulous and uninspired fashion of the naturalists of the nineteenth century."
(12) "there is plenty of evidence for the medical efficacy of hypnosis. There are well-authenticated cases of the successful treatment by these means of such stubborn disabilities as...homosexual tendencies." Well, if you are a gender scholar or activist, you can start kicking Ian Fleming now. Ian, you might be dead for fifty years, but you are in trouble now, buddy :)
(13) Bond's words of wisdom - "Too much money is the worst curse you can lay on anyone's head. I have enough. Tracy has enough. It will be fun saving up to buy something we want but can't quite afford. That is the only kind of money to have - not quite enough."

Well, it is time for me to take a break from escapist summer reading. When the sun gets hotter in May, and nearly melts my brain, I might get back to my next Bond novel. For now, it is time to get back to 'The Power of the Dog' by Thomas Savage, the dark, bleak, depressing kind of book that I read on a normal day. Normal service resumed :)

Have you read 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' or watched the movie version? What do you think about it?

Another great bond book, we are back to the old bond who we know and love

Again I am moved by a Bond tale. So much of a loss and so much pain. Indeed, I am left with intense heartbreak for James and intense hatred of Blofeld.

I really liked this book. One of the best of the Fleming Bond series.

eponymous sentence:
p218: Bond watched the message go, the end of another chapter of his duties, as Marc-Ange had put it, 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service.'

space:
p11: To James Bond, sitting in one of the concrete shelters with his face to the setting sun, there was something poignant, ephemeral about it all.It reminded him almost too vividly of childhood--of the velvet feel of the hot powder sand, and the painful grit of wet sand between young toes when the time came for him to put his shoes and socks on, of the precious little pile of sea-shells and interesting wrack on the sill of his bedroom window ('No, we'll have to leave that behind, darling. It'll dirty up your trunk!'), of the small crabs scuttling away from the nervous fingers groping beneath the seaweed in the rock-pools, of the swimming and swimming and swimming through the dancing waves--always in those days it seemed, lit with sunshine--and then the infuriating, inevitable 'time to come out.'

echo:
p24: James Bond slid his car into the million-pound line of cars in the car park, told the same bagagiste, who was now taking rich, small stuff out of the Lancia, to bring up his bags, and went in to the reception-desk. The magager impressively took over from the clerk and greeted Bond with golded-toothed effusion, while making a mental note to earn a good mark with the Chef de Police by reporting Bond's arrival, so that the Chef could, in his turn, make a good mark with the Deuxiéme and the SDT by putting the news on the teleprinter to Paris.

case:
p63: '...I did my national service with Intelligence in baor, so please don't worry about security....'

cement:
p100: It was an undistinguished but powerfully built one-storey affair made of local granite blocks, with a flat cement roof from which, at the far end, protruded a small, professional-looking radio mast which, Bond assumed, had given the pilot his landing instructions on the previous night and which would also serve as the ears and mouth of Blofeld.

dash:
p110: As they came through the entrance into the reception lounge, Bond said casually, 'Oh, by the way, Fräulein Bunt, I was in the sk-iroom just now.'

plot:
p213: On the grenade!
Bond, sick in the stomach, lifted his toes and let himself go. What setting had Blofeld put on it? How long had he held it with the pin out?

The ending was definitely spoiled by the movie, because somehow I distinctly remember it even when it was already decades ago when I last saw it.

That Ursula Andress cameo was so cool--most likely a tribute to her performance in Dr. No, released a year prior to this book's publication.

Of note also was the uncharacteristic deception of James' identity.

Ian Fleming's 11th James Bond novel is an adventure with a capital A. There's drama, action, romance & even a little humour here & there. High up in the Swiss Alps SPECTRE leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld hatches another evil plot & it's down to secret agent 007 to defeat him.
Once again Ian Fleming creates an array of wonderful characters. Marc Ange Draco, the extremely likable head of the Union Corse, is probably my favourite Fleming creation since Kerim Bay in From Russia With Love. His daughter, Tracy, is also a character who leaves a big impression on James Bond as well as the reader.
The author takes us inside fascinating places, such as the College of Arms in London where Bond learns about heraldry. Fleming's superb prose pulls you effortlessly into these worlds whether he is describing a location, a meal or a nerve racking ski chase.
This is still my favourite James Bond novel, from the tense opening chapter on a French beach right up to the shattering climax. Superb.

An exceptional story with excellent intrigue and action, and perhaps most notably, among the most introspective and revealing of the Bond stories as 007 falls in love and ultimately ties the knot, for the first, and I believe, only time. The portrayals of his foes, the pompous criminal mastermind Blofeld and his austere henchwoman Irma Bunt, are memorable and amusing, as is Bond's excellently played cover identity as a pedantic researcher for the College of Arms. Also some great exchanges with the always stoic M.

I'm truly surprised. Fleming/Bond #10, "The Spy Who Loved Me", is one of the weakest in the series. Was Fleming just bored by then? But #11?*
Spy - 5 stars: Bond is such a real person here. He writes a resignation letter ("My many appeals to be relieved...have been ignored..."), he's had his fill of mayhem. And after half a bottle of Mouton Rothschild '53, it's off to a casino to celebrate his decision. Then later, Swiss Air Control asks, "Who gave you clearance?" Bond replies, "You did." He smiles and thinks "The Big Lie...nothing like it..." Then later, working on Christmas, "It never crossed his [Bond's] mind that anyone really cared about him." With no toys, no gadgets, (I believed this story start to finish) he finds himself locked in a room, high in the Alps. He has only wits, strength, looks (hence model George Lazenby to play the part? and very well, I must add) and perhaps true love to escape this "Magic-Mountain"-type fortress. This is the best portrayal of a spy I've ever read.
Mission - 4: Readers aren't informed of the real villainous deed for about 200 pages: instead we are treated to a beautifully structured story with perhaps Fleming's best, smartest writing. Not to mention brilliant chapter titles. And I found no plot holes.
Villain(s) - 5: Blofeld/Spectre plus Smersh, Irma Bunt, and a few other bad folks from around the globe. And maybe some good guys who aren't?
Action - 4: I loved the opening gambling scene. There are of course several discrete love scenes (4 or 5) two car chases, a triple-layered climax, more, and lots of ominous hangers-on.
Resolution - 5: Perfect for England, perfect for another Blofeld encounter. But I just....
Summary - 4.6: ...did not want this to end. But I can't tell you why. *This is my favorite Bond novel so far, as I have two left. And as much as I like Ludlum and Lecarre, neither wrote a straight-up, uncomplicated, tight, one-sit- read spy novel. And as much as I loved the film "Goldfinger", the source material for that film not as good as this novel.