Live and Let Die

Ho-ly shit, you are terrible at your job, Mr. Bond.



I wondered if Casino Royale was some sort of Batman Year One kind of thing and James would begin to progress as an agent with each book.
No. No, he has not.
It's as though Mr. Bean were given a license to kill and set loose on the world.



Once again, Bond is caught completely unawares over and over again. He not only fails to notice fairly obvious traps, but in a spectacularly stupid move he also blatantly ignores the bad feeling his clairvoyant love interest has in being by herself in a hotel room.
Insisting she will be fine when he leaves her alone.
Just lock the door, babe.
He then has the gall to be shocked when she immediately gets kidnapped by the villain.



He's also off sniffing his farts as his friend (the American agent Felix Leiter) gets parts of himself literally EATEN OFF BY A SHARK.
And survives! Because he is a badass, and I'll admit that was kind of a cool twist.



Though, unlike in the 1st book, Bond plays an active role in taking out the bad guys by planting some underwater bombs.
Oh, he still gets captured. And it's still pure luck that he and Solitare survive, but at least this time around he can say he took out some of the agents.
Agents of arguably the dumbest acronym to say out loud.
SMASH, you say?
No, SMERSH.



Now, if you've read this one you'll know what I'm talking about when I say it's filled to the brim with hyper-cringy backhanded compliments towards "the black folk". And of course, he wouldn't be Bond if he didn't think women were like toilet paper - soft, necessary, and ultimately flushable. It's an awkward ride.
And believe me, you will feel every moment of it.



The absolute best part of the book is when they end up in the Tampa/St Pete area surrounded by a plethora of retirees. Felix and James roll their eyes at the decrepit oldsters and decide death is better than retiring to Florida to play shuffleboard.
But I think they'll both change their minds someday.
Because on top of fantastic weather, Florida has the best pony rides!



While it may not sound like it, I'm actually quite enjoying these books. Yes, it's interesting to read the origins of the greatest secret agent in pop culture, but there's also the added bonus that these books are an incredible amount of fun in a so-bad-its-good sort of way.
You're a trainwreck, James. And I can't look away.

Warm locale vacation after a year of stressful living. I will leave it at that. It is January and that means Florida and that means appropriate poolside reading. When packing for this long needed vacation, I made sure to select books that either did not require much brain power or ones where I was already familiar with the story and could come along for the protagonist’s ride through the plot. The original James Bond series by Ian Fleming does both for me. My husband and I are huge fans of the entire series; our favorite Bond is Daniel Craig whereas my father stopped after Sean Connery. That debate is sure to last the duration of our trip or until we can watch a Craig Bond film as a family. I have been impatiently waiting for the newest Bond film for nearly a year now and decide to fill in the gaps with the original books that I had not read yet. Even though I know the gist of every Bond film, I knew the books would still be the fun, mindless reading that I craved.

Ian Fleming worked at an intelligence desk for the British Secret Service during World War II. He was one of Britain’s brightest minds and the country could not afford to risk sending him to the front lines. Fleming deciphered incoming Russian codes that could have possibly put the balance of the war at risk from an allied perspective. He did not come up with the idea for James Bond as a spy cracking Russian espionage rings on a ring; during the war essentially Fleming was James Bond. After the war, Fleming married and spent most of his time at a Jamaican home he named Goldeneye. There he wrote one Bond book a year for fourteen years until his premature death in 1966. By the time the first Bond film came out in the mid 1960s, Bond was already an international sensation as millions around the world were already familiar with his persona from Fleming’s books. That Bond as a film franchise is still around in its 26th installment and counting speaks to the long lasting and universal appeal of his character: a secret agent who has a license to kill and ultimately prevails. It is little wonder that Bond movies are still popular today, and that Fleming’s books also enjoy that level of popularity, especially among the film enthusiasts.

In Live and Let Die, Bond has once again teamed up with FBI agent Felix Leiter in an attempt to foil a man known as Mr Big, a Negro from Harlem who has ties to SMERSH. Bond has detested SMERSH since the war and would like nothing more than to defeat the Russian agency once and for all. It is now 1952 and the Cold War is in full swing. MI-6 has gotten word that a negro exporting ring has smuggled old British empire gold coins out of Jamaica into St Petersburg bay. These coins are worth millions even in the 1950s and could be used to finance SMERSH’s operations. It is Bond’s job to foil these plans, no matter how dangerous Mr Big is. In America, when faced with apprehending a subject, the FBI says to live and let live. Bond says to live and let die. The conflicting thought lines between the two agencies would have to compromise in order to shut down the Russians. With the likable, comical character Leiter, Bond has the perfect foil. They have the agreement that Mr Big has to be stopped at all costs, some of them that could endanger their lives.

As in Bond movies, there is action but it is not the nonstop action that one sees on film. The first half is devoted to the thought process of how to stop Mr Big. Bond gathers intelligence by attempting to dress and think like an American. He and Leiter go on a reconnaissance mission to one of Mr Big’s operations in Harlem and discover his northernly base that helps to finance his mission. There, Bond meets Soltaire, the Bond girl in this book. She is Mr Big’s fiancée against her wishes, and she pleas with Bond to save her so that she can assist him in defeating the evil minded Mr Big. This is the 1950s, mind you, and the only assistance Solitaire provides is in the form of love, but she is a good respite from Bond’s task at hand. Unlike the films, there is only one Bond girl, and only implied intimacy, which is more fun than the movies because readers can surmise innuendos on their own. Once freed, Solitaire accompanies Bond to Florida, and then the action begins in the book’s second half. Still not the nonstop action of a film but the last hundred pages move from Florida to Jamaica quickly as Bond is determined to defeat Mr Big and hopefully SMERSH once and for all.

Fleming’s depictions of Jamaica are so inviting, especially after a year of being cooped up in my home. He tells the history of Captain Morgan and piracy, showing that in addition to fun, Fleming knew his history. Of course, in the end Bond prevails; he is James Bond after all. I have both the McCartney song and Bond theme in my head now as I would love to see the action unfold on screen. Who am I kidding: Live and Let Die is a Sean Connery film. Daniel Craig is the best Bond, and he still has the upcoming film that I am even more impatient to see now. Let the family debate as to the best Bond continue. We have the rest of our vacation to let it unfold.

Originally published in 1954, the second book in the James Bond series… a book title made famous by the Roger Moore led film adaption. A quite dark book, with Mr Big, a Black master criminal and bullion smuggler using Voodoo to keep control of his numerous minions. An adventure that moves from Harlem, on to St Petersburg (USA), and finishes off in Fleming's favourite haunts in the West Indies, including his beloved Jamaica. 6 out of 12.

Rating: 3.5* of five

It's the 1973 first outing by Simon Templar...I mean Roger Moore!...that I review here. The book is twenty years older and even more racist.

Holy pimpmobile! I'd forgotten this was the blaxploitation Bond flick. Appallingly racist. Horrifyingly insultingly so. And may I just say, "INTRODUCING JANE SEYMOUR" is the most chilling phrase I've ever in all my life seen on a movie screen?

Introducing. Jane. Seymour. As in, "not seen on the big screen before?" She was in some other stuff...but nothing as big as Bond. And the horrible thing is that Jane Seymour's character is only able to tell the future as a tarot reader while she's a virgin. Does that clue you in on what Bond's gonna do?

But all that comes after Bond's first African-American love interest. He sleeps with her while in a pale-blue loser suit. With a white belt. Wearing a wife-beater under it. Oh gawd, the seventies.

Then Bond condescends to pop Jane's cherry and takes away he rpowers, which the sexist sociopath clearly doesn't believe in; things go further and further downhill as Geoffrey Holder does a horrifying turn as a voodoo priest in the most ridiculous half-white makeup...well.

So of course Bond solves the identity puzzle, rescues now-slutty Jane from her life of luxury, and brings down the (black, of course) drug dealer. Then Geoffrey Holder laughs his unique laugh as we head for the credits.

Wow. Forty years really makes a lot of difference in how things look. I never liked Simon Templar...I mean Roger Moore!...as Bond. From the get-go, I found him too TV for the role of the big screen's biggest baddest spy. What was charming and roguish in other performances was slippery and oleaginous in Moore's performances. But I had no memory of how revoltingly racist this film was. I shudder to say it, but I was probably blind to it because it was...ulp...the way I saw the lily-white privileged Republican world I lived in.

*gaaak*

Well, that's enough of that. The dumbest car chase ever put on film takes place in an alternate New York where there are only Chevrolet Caprices, Chevrolet Impalas, and Cadillac Eldorados on the roads. Except one elderly Ford truck, which the lone Chevrolet Biscayne in New York, carrying Bond, hits head-on and somehow Bond isn't even scratched despite not wearing a seat belt. Yeah! Now that's the Bond we all love!

And the title tune. Oh my goodness, the title tune. It's one of the indelible memories of 1973, along with the Rayburn Committee hearings and the Energy Crisis. Pretty good tune. But earwormy as all hell! Once in your mind, it ain't a-comin' out easy.

"Enjoy."

4 Stars. The tension fades a bit here and there, but it's a good one. Bond is over his head and luck plays an important role. His friend, CIA agent Felix Leiter, almost succumbs to a horrible shark attack and James barely survives a midnight swim off the north shore of Jamaica, let alone a harrowing train ride from New York to St. Petersburg, Florida. He and Solitaire, the terrified plaything of Mr. Big, were attacked twice in their sleeper, the second time by an artillery barrage just after they quietly slipped off the train in Jacksonville. Who is this Mr. Big? An oversized bundle of gang leader, gold smuggler, Soviet SMERSH agent, and voodoo wizard in Harlem. He's got tentacles across the US, and in Jamaica, Haiti, and pre-Castro Cuba. It's the 1950s. The book deals with the fear of some blacks, to avoid the difficult terminology used in the book, of voodoo witchcraft from Africa via the Caribbean. Get set to learn more than you need to about zombies and Baron Samedi, the lord of the underworld. Get set to meet a most interesting new character, Quarrel, a fisherman in Jamaica. And through Ian Fleming's eyes, get set for the astonishing beauty of that alluring island. (September 2021)

2.5 stars

n  ***2018 Summer of Spies***n

Wow, this book has not aged gracefully. The casual racism really overwhelmed everything else for me. The dust jacket stated that Fleming had spent some time with the NY police as research. He seems to have absorbed their attitudes towards African-Americans without any reservations. All the black characters seem to be superstitious, criminal, or both. At least he allows Mr. Big to be a really talented criminal, not a push-over.

Fleming’s own attitudes towards women shine through his Bond character with regard to Solitare, the white woman who he rescues from Mr. Big. Fleming seems to have regarded women as conquests and told many people that women were more like pets to him than people [per Andrew Lycett’s biography of IF]. Fleming was well known as a womanizer and was accused by several people of being ‘a cad and a bounder,’ something which he did not dispute. Solitare is mostly a prize for Bond, something to be enjoyed once the action is over with.

Despite that, there are some bright spots—Fleming was very familiar with Jamaica, owning a house there and spending a great deal of his time swimming, diving, and fishing while he was in residence at Goldeneye, his Jamaican home. The scenery and details of this setting are extremely well realized in Live and Let Die. The descriptions of fish during Bond’s dives are fabulous, too. Unsurprisingly, the Jamaican portions of the book are far superior to those set in the United States. [I also thought that the fishy method of smuggling was an ingenious invention and I loved the shark tank!]

One can’t have a Summer of Spies without James Bond, so I’ll be proceeding on to Moonraker in short order. And, incidentally, I still love Paul McCartney's song Live and Let Die which was written for the movie version.

Live and Let Die is the second novel in Ian Fleming’s spy thriller series about James Bond, 007 (he gets one of these numbers because he has killed people in the line of duty), and is not set as others later in the series in some “sophisticated” or “exotic” locale, but primarily in the US (Harlem and Florida, which he does in some ways still exoticize, seems to me) and (as he writes it, exotic) Jamaica. Published in 1954 to widespread critical and popular acclaim, it was written at Fleming’s Goldeneye estate in Jamaica. The main idea is that Bond is trying to catch the truly impressively villainous Mr. Big, a Harlem Druglord, who as it turns out is also Dr. Kananga, a corrupt Jamaican dictator. So on one level he’s a sort of a Voodoo Baron, but Bond knows he is also an operative for SMERSH who has killed three British agents. He has to put Mr. (big, black) Big out of business!

The first real action takes place in Harlem and maybe it is for me due in part to the reader of the audiobook, who doesn’t capture African-American, Floridian or Jamaican accents well, but my listening did not convince me that Fleming was an ideal person to introduce me to early fifties Harlem. The Brit Fleming is condescending at best when he praises “Negress” beauty and jazz, at its best, and at its worst, is offensive about big African American men he allows his narrator to describe as “apes.” Black women: Sultry animals. Black men: Violent animals. We know Bond from the suave Sean Connery or Roger Moore and may not have thought of him as particularly racist in the seventies (though I think based on a recent viewing of the film we were wrong), but I think Fleming's original Bond (and it comes through the narration) pretty much doesn’t fully respect black folks as human beings.

So we jump from Harlem where we have seen lots of poor black people he doesn’t much like, to Florida where we now see lots of white (trash, he pretty much makes clear) folks he doesn’t much like, from violent coastal fishermen to blue-haired retirees. So it's class issues, too. Fleming here heaps on more disdain for crass American culture: Terrible fast food, tasteless beer, insultingly stupid advertising, boringly stupid people everywhere. Some of us just might agree with some of these critiques, but Bond’s view here of The Ugly American just makes him sound like the Ugly Brit Snob. So! Fleming doesn’t like poor American black people, and he doesn’t like poor American white people. Equal opportunity hater. Not a fan of the states, generally, shall we say. Did we get that impression originally in seeing the films in the seventies? I dunno, I just thought they were fun as a teenager. Had a few things to learn from reading the books!

And women? We maybe don’t think of the Sean Connery Bond as misogynist (though maybe we’d all agree he is sexist?), but in the first two books of Fleming’s series, Bond is definitely not a big fan of women, regardless of color. Well, he appears to enjoy looking at nearly naked dancers in Harlem (call them "exotic" dancers? Strippers?), but he really doesn’t hold women in high estimation. In Florida, he says of a (white) woman, she’s “too pretty to be a nurse,” and so on. Especially n the early novels he's generally rude and disdainful of women, not the image of Bond I got from the movies, not even in my recent viewing.

There are exceptions to his hating, though. Bond is a smart and sophisticated snob, and Fleming names his whiskey and clothes choices with the contemporary flair of a film product placement strategist. But what "we"--who have helped build the Bond franchise--like about him is that he lives the High Life we want to live. He has Taste and Style. And in addition to products, there are Bond-like superior human beings he likes and respects. Exhibit one: From Harlem he manages to free the lovely (white? mixed? She’s supposed to be an obeah voodoo psychic, so she’s a descendant of slaves, right? But played by Jane Seymour in the 1973 blaxploitation Bond?) Solitaire, who retains her Tarot–card mystical expertise ONLY IF she is a virgin—though with Bond near, can she be so for long?—is rescued by Bond from the clutches of Big, who then recaptures her in Jamaica, where he plans to kill both she and Bond in a particularly cruel and sadistic way: Dragging them together across coral reefs behind a speed boat, and when their skin is properly flayed off, watching them slowly gnawed to death by murderous barracudas. (In the first Bond book, Fleming had Bond horribly tortured, so there is a pattern forming here of s/m obsessions we will need to address in therapy, Ian).

So, I really disliked half of this book for the sometimes nasty tone and the racism, but I’ll quickly shift gears and suggest that Fleming largely saves the book for me as thriller in the second half by

1) his lyrical descriptions of an island he clearly knows and loves, which is clearly Jamaica. The tone of this part of the book is slower, the descriptions beautiful, vs. the Harlem or Florida sections.
2) Mr. Big is a truly brutal bad guy, and his double life is pretty interesting. Big describes himself as the first great Black Criminal, and hey, he has a Big Library, and in an intellectual, so some of ths undermines his black animal "essence;"
3) Solitaire is a worthy Bond “girl” in that, though she doesn’t really possess many spy-worthy skills, her voodoo/psychic skills are interesting, and she's pretty strong (though later Bond "girls" get stronger;
4) . The final scenes on the boat are evidence that Fleming is a masterful writer of “thrilling” spy action, as he confronts Mr. Big. He’s as good here in action adventure writing as anyone, so you can see how people liked the book (and maybe didn’t even see the racism as problematic in 1954). He's not as good a writer as the best noir writers, but he can get us to turn the pages when he has to.

In the 1973 blaxploitation version of Live and Let Die, Mr Big is a tool of Soviet agents working through the Black Power movement. Fleming, I am told, actually believed what a small number of paranoid people believed at the time, that the civil rights movement and the NAACP were fronts for the Communist party bent on doing what the Russkies do, destroying America, though not through election-tampering, but through violent Revolution. Fleming also saw Mr. Big as an example of a corrupt American colonizing Jamaica. But these views come through in the film more than in the original book.

You got a problem with my bothering to call Bond/Fleming as racist? Okay, I know it would be difficult to find many wholly enlightened and non-racist pulp, noir, adventurer stories in 1954. You don’t look for subtle feminist or anti-racist texts in the mid-twentieth century. But there’s a difference—I think—between some of James Ellroy’s racist characters and Ellroy. Bond in the movies is suave and never crass, but Fleming's Bond (and the narrator) here seems a bit nasty in places I didn’t expect. Maybe that’s my real complaint, that Fleming’s Bond is not the suave smirking seductive Bond of Sean Connery or Roger Moore but a kind of existentialist-lite cold guy dripping in some darker disdain for everything that is not him. I like him besting Solitaire and Big, though, I'll admit.

Anyway, I had at the first half intended to give this one two stars, but in the end there’s enough good and entertaining writing to make me (almost) forget some of the first half ugliness, if not forgive. I recommend it for some of the crazy voodoo virgin barracuda fun, Solitaire and Mr. Big.

It might have been For Your Eyes Only...



...or more likely Octopussy...



...but I want to say Live and Let Die...



...may have been the first James Bond movie I ever saw. Regardless, it stands as one of my first recollections of the thrilling spy and his over-the-top escapades.

I LOVED these movies as a kid. As an adult my fervor wore away, but remnants of that love never left me and eventually I became intrigued enough to check out the novels out of a curiosity to see how true the movies were to the books. Also, it just so happened that as a kid I spent some time down in Florida, where part of this novel takes place, thus upping the intrigue slightly.

In this, the second installment in the series, British spy James Bond is sent to America. After taking a beating from operatives of SMERSH, a Soviet counterintelligence agency of Fleming's making, Bond is set on a bit of revenge. Does that make him, a white Brit, the ideal spy to infiltrate the black organized crime scene? Perhaps not, but woohoo, let's go along for the ride anyhow!

There's plenty of action in Live and Let Die, but there's also a little social commentary and local color. Fleming did some research on this and that and he wants to show you what he learned. That's how this book reads at times. I like detail and setting a scene, just don't go Moby Dick on me. This is far too short to come near that, but it edges towards it at times.

The movie differs from the book in a few ways. It's been a while, but if I recall correctly the focus is on drugs over pirate treasure, and it's set at times in New Orleans, not Florida. The blaxploitation is still there though!

Ah, racism. It's hard to talk about this book without mentioning it. The constant use of the word negro alone is cringe-worthy. There are very few portrayals of positive, black community role models. Many are depicted as still being under the spell of Caribbean voodoo.




However, this is a spy thriller, not a political commentary. The "bad guy" and his henchmen are black, so they're going to be portrayed negatively. It seems some have mistaken the racial overtones within this book to be blatant racism. For instance, the chapter title "Nigger Heaven" is a reference to a pro-black and pro-Harlem renaissance novel of the same name. If you didn't know that, you would indeed form a low opinion of Fleming...unless you're a white supremacist. But I don't see hatred here by Fleming. Some of his characters may reflect prejudiced attitudes, but others do not. M, the pinnacle of intelligence herein, sees blacks as coming into their own and rediscovering their own attributes after throwing off the yoke of oppression. Anyhow, that's enough of that. I'm a middle aged white guy and so I'm apparently predisposed to turn a blind eye to racism against minorities. However, that's not me. I stand for equality right down the line. Anyway, back to the book...

When comparing the movies to the books, it's tough on the books (at least what I've read so far). The movies are designed to squeeze every bit of excitement they can out of the story. Here, the books are a little more leisurely when it comes to the action. Perhaps Fleming was remembering his own experiences working for and with intelligence agencies during the war. It was no doubt not half as exciting as it's portrayed in the movies.

In summary, this is not essential reading unless you're a diehard for spy books. If anything approaching un-sanitized racial discussion triggers you, I'd steer clear too. But hey, those who prefer their hero not rape anyone, take heart! Live and Let Die is much less rapey than Casino Royale!