This is a significant improvement over Casino Royale, except in one major respect which nobody reading the book is likely to miss. Bond is much less unpleasant this time round - without ever being someone you'd actually want to spend time with - and the prose is much improved, though rarely rising above the functional. The adventure sequences have the requisite modicum of tension, and when the action reaches Jamaica, Fleming's love for the place leads him to render it vividly.

(Bond remains a ludicrous character, of course. There's a particularly hilarious sequence where his psychic girlfriend tells him she has a feeling something terrible's going to happen to her if he leaves her alone, and he pats her arm and tells her not to worry her pretty head, and leaves... then wonders, privately, whether there might be something in it after all, but is immediately distracted by seeing an EXCITING CAR! and thinks no more of it until he discovers she's been kidnapped.)

The elephant in the room - in that he's huge and grey and has a long memory - is Fleming's villain Mr Big, and his African-American crime syndicate. Aside from stray remarks about the stupidity of Bulgarians,Casino Royale was mercifully short on opportunities for racism, but Fleming's presentation of black people in this book is frankly eye-watering. They're consistently portrayed as backward, superstitious and undeveloped: several characters express surprise that "the negro race" is now "producing" gifted doctors, writers and the like, and Mr Big's criminal genius is seen as part of this process of development whereby exceptional black people gradually start attaining equality with white people. Fleming portrays Big himself and Bond's manservant in Jamaica, Quarrel, as admirable in various ways, but also as undeniably inferior - Big morally, and Quarrel in social terms which Fleming presents as an immutable law of nature. He's also at pains to stress the European ancestry of these particular black men, and the fact that they don't look very black at all.

It's clear that Fleming was very proud of his observations of African-American speech patterns - which he presents to us at truly excruciating length - yet he had also somehow convinced himself that it was plausible to claim that the entire black population of the USA lived in superstitious fear of voodoo, making them willing dupes of any gangster willing to exploit this racial blind spot.

This kind of thinking isn't "a product of its time". It's racism so toxic it very nearly succeeds in obscuring the novel's egregious sexism, which is indeed routine for this kind of narrative in this era.

All of which said... this is a more entertaining novel than Casino Royale, and I have the luxury of being a man, and white, so don't experience its ideological flaws as a constant attack on my personhood. If you start from this position of privilege, then Fleming's rather like a drunk great-uncle at a wedding: if you can keep him off certain topics - like black people, and women, and gambling, and cars, and politics - his tall stories can be moderately entertaining.

And we're off! Much more than Casino Royale, Live and Let Die begins to cement the Bond formula and feels much more like what you'd expect from a James Bond adventure. For instance, the denouement comes at the right place - the end of the book - and there's less contemplation about why Bond does what he does. Specifically, he's out to get the Russian master-spy ring SMERSH and kill any m@#$%^#$er who gets in his way.

In this one, Bond travels to far and exotic... America! Bond is set on the trail of Mr. Big, an African American crime lord who uses the voodoo persona of Baron Samedi to secure his hold on his superstitious underlings. Bond and Mr. Big repeatedly underestimate each other, each one gaining the upper hand and losing it in their duel all the way from New York down to Tampa. As a travelogue, Live and Let Die gives Fleming a chance to both glamorize Harlem and make it feel unsafe and scary, while also slipping in his disdain for the motel and fast food culture that was already taking hold in the U.S. of the mid-fifties.

The book, and Fleming's writing, really shines when he leaves the U.S. for his true love, Jamaica. It's well known that Fleming wrote all the Bond stories from his Jamaican vacation home, and Live and Let Die is the first time he lets his love of the island, its people, and its beauty show up in the series. Bond himself changes when he reaches Jamaica, leaving the softness of British and American culture behind for the sun-beaten toughness of the Caribbean as he trains his body and mind for his final assault on Mr. Big's operation. The final few chapters are tense and amazing.

So why only three stars? Racism. The whole book is tainted by Fleming's condescension toward characters of African descent. He acknowledges the accomplishments by African Americans that were growing in leaps and bounds during the period in which the book was written, but in a "Aww, isn't that cute" sort of way. Of the African characters depicted, only Mr. Big is allowed to stand on an equal footing with the whites. The rest are poor caricatures. Even Mr. Big himself is portrayed as a monologueing nutbag of exactly the kind that parodies of Bond would tear apart in later years.

What's interesting, though, is that the racism in the book appears to be Fleming's - never Bond's. Bond himself seems blind to race - he doesn't care what color you are, he'll kill you just the same.

One last gripe: Solitaire is a much stronger heroine than Vesper Lynd, but also less interesting. And, of course, being written in the Fifties she's the only woman in the novel who isn't a waitress or a dingy desk clerk.

Growing up, my father was a huge James Bond fan. I have an early memory of him taking my cousin to see a re-release of Thunderball in the theater. Dad used to talk about how much he'd loved the Bond novels when he was younger, and any time a Bond movie was on television he would watch. I never quite got it. I couldn't get into the movies and the books bored me terribly. (To be fair, I think I only tried On Her Majesty's Secret Service; and I was eleven.) The Bond I remember most vividly is Pierce Brosnan. He looked the part, but the scripts were horrible and something about the films just didn't work.

The rebooted Bond film franchise starring Daniel Craig finally created the space in which my father and I could share Bond. I loved Casino Royale, and it inspired me to read the novel. I came away from that book wondering why Fleming wasn't talked about in the same way that Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett are. I came away from Live and Let Die with a very clear understanding of why that is.

Let's start with the easiest critique of the book: It's racist. There really just isn't a defense for it. The book was written in the 1950s by a man who had spent a good deal of his life living in Jamaica. It takes place primarily in Harlem where every African-American character is rendered a caricature out of an early Disney cartoon--you know, the ones they don't show anymore. None of the black characters is given a fully formed personality. In fact, none of them are given a half-formed personality. They are portrayed in the classic racist ways, as animalistic, hyper-sexualized, dehumanized. Scenes of Harlem involve pulsing, tribal drums; jazz; lascivious men; and loose women. The villain, Mr. Big, comes the closest to being an actual character, but even he is little more than a man who takes advantage of his people's belief in voodoo.

Next: The book is sexist. It's Bond. Of course it is. Shall we move on? Yes and no. Yes because everyone knows Bond (in both film and print) isn't exactly marching with a pink ribbon. No because Casino Royale featured a fairly well-rendered female lead. Solitaire, the female character of this novel is a damsel in distress. That's it. That's all.

Beyond those two social critiques of the novel, I'll simply state that the plot is straightforward, boring, and relies on absurd situations to raise the tension.

Why are Chandler and Hammett so highly regarded? They wrote better prose. They invented more interesting characters. And they wrote stories that were complex and true to life. I'm going to read the next Bond novel, but my expectations have been significantly lowered. What a shame. Casino Royale really was great.

This instalment in the James Bond franchise has basically everything you could want in a thriller novel: fighting, a terrifying villain, romance, tropical countries and carnivorous fish. I thoroughly enjoyed this. However, there was no big surprise or plot twist, which was slightly disappointing.

That being said, I’m really enjoying the James Bond books so far and this was definitely an enjoyable read.

Actor Rory Kinnear (who played Bill Tanner in four Daniel Craig Bond films) reads Ian Flemin'g second James Bond novel.
I know the story so well & have reviewed it before, but it's good to hear a new voice bring 007 to life once again.

This review was first posted on BookLikes:
http://brokentune.booklikes.com/post/...

When a few years ago I was told that my work was sending me to New Orleans, my immediate need was to find a copy of Live and Let Die, because, well, a part of the film is set there and the surrounding swamps of Louisiana - and I like a Bond story.

So, I got comfortable in my seat on the cross-Atlantic flight and opened my book. A few chapters into the story it suddenly dawned on me...
The book is totally different from the film and there was not going to be a connection with New Orleans. Instead, we follow Bond on an adventure that leads from New York, to Florida, to Jamaica.

Live and Let Die is a weird story. By weird I do mean on one hand the plot of the story - if you are familiar with the films - cuts short many of the plots reused by Cubby Broccoli in the screen adventures.
I won't go into details and add spoilers, but having read this one and loved it - plotwise - I now fully understand why I loved Licence to Kill as a film. It is dark.

The other weird - and somewhat expected yet still disappointing - aspect of this installment on the series is that this is the most chauvinist one of the Bond novels that I have read so far. Casino Royale, the predecessor to Live and Let Die was not half as offensive and the novels that followed after it (as far as I have read them) also are less extreme. But this one? Hmmmm. I seriously cannot recommend it to anyone who is easily offended.

I read one review, which proclaimed that Live and Let Die was themed on the emancipation of African Americans. Oh, really? I'm not sure that the reviewer gets sarcasm, but it sure is not what you'd think of as emancipation if the aspiration of Bond's nemesis is to be "absolutely pre-eminent" in his chosen profession as a criminal.

Besides the cringe-worthy quantities of racial slur, this is the book where Bond expresses his views of the female lead character - Solitaire - as his "prize" and that this is the only way that he is able to see her. Hmmm.

Ok, so why did I still love the book? Because the chauvinist parts are written so badly that it is just ridiculous. It made me laugh.
Also, there are quite few parts of the book that are absolutely beautiful and those are the descriptions of marine life. There are quite a few scenes that take part under water and I would not have missed reading these sections for anything. Fleming had just as much of a gift for writing about nature as he did for making his hero look a preposterous twit:

" 'Undertaker's Wind' though Bond and smiled wryly. So it would have to be tonight. The only chance, and the conditions were nearly perfect. Except that the shark repellent stuff would not arrive in time. And that was only a refinement. There was no excuse. This was what he had travelled two thousand miles and five deaths to do. And yet he shivered at the prospect of the dark adventure under the sea that he had already put off in his mind until tomorrow. Suddenly he loathed and feared the sea and everything in it. The millions of tiny antennae that would stir and point as he went by that night, the eyes that would wake and watch him, the pulses that would miss for the hundredth of a second and the go beating quietly on, the jelly tendrils that would grope and reach for him, as blind in the light as in the dark."

Live and Let Die definitely a product of its time but it doesn't resign the fact that Fleming was prejudiced to his core and it is weaved through every page of his writing. It feels gross to read. Any black or female character is a charactature and the white British man is always heralded as being smarter, more effective and more civilized. James Bond is an icon because of books and stories like this but the cost of how it portrays anyone other than non-white men seems too high and not worth the price. Shockingly, according to the forward, this isn't even the most racist edition of the book thanks to some pretty heavy revisions. I can't imagine what the original read like. 

It's not enough to say it's a trope of the genre or of Bond fiction because that diminishes the stories that are told, even of Fleming's time that don't rely on the stereotypes depicted here. Even if it's considered a classic, choose something else. Horowitz has written great bond stories set in this same period that feel true to the post war spy era and don't leave you feeling slimy afterwards.

Bond sniffed. "Marijuana," he commented.
"Most of the real hep-cats smoke reefers," explained Leiter. "Wouldn't be allowed in most places."

So, yeah, this book is really dated. More so than the movies, having been published a good decade before the first Bond film. Also, James Bond here is a bit more problematic as a hero than the cinematic ones we've all grown up with. For one thing, he's incredibly clumsy when it comes to surveillance and covert operations. Early in the novel, Bond and CIA agent Leiter decide to go into Harlem to get a look at Mr. Big and his operations firsthand. You'd think they'd just go and hit some of Big's clubs, have a few drinks, check out the scene and go back to their hotels without giving themselves away, right? Not these two. Everywhere they go they ask waiters, bartenders, servers, cab drivers, anyone, if they know where "Mr. Big is operating tonight." So it should come as no surprise that they're quickly captured, lectured and tortured before being inexplicably released to tangle with Big another day.

In another scene Solitaire, Mr. Big's mistress, reaches out to Bond claiming she'd do anything to escape from Mr. Big. Bond invites her to his hotel room where, incredibly, he divulges that he's an agent from London and that he's leaving New York for Florida later that day and which train he's taking and where he'll be going in Florida, and when he'll be getting there. He blows the whole operation on a woman he's only just met, merely because he believes her story of wanting to leave Mr. Big. A real hardboiled spy would feed Solitaire a line of bullshit, pump her for information and then turn her over to the authorities. Oh yeah, and bed her down first. So...strike 2 against Bond for this novel.

Strike 3 is that Bond is really just a terrible spy. He is easily duped and tricked by Big's henchmen throughout the novel. He's in a restaurant while Solitaire is kidnapped, or he's oversleeping while Leiter is nearly killed.

Finally the novel is racist, even for it's time. There is no getting around it. It's full of the worst stereotypes in how Black Americans are depicted. Other reviewers have noted that plenty here on Goodreads.

So why did I like it? For one thing it's really well written. Yes, the plot is problematic and moved along by Bond's mistakes, but I enjoyed the details that Fleming heaps upon the reader, whether it's the scenery outside a train window to the motels along the Gulf Coast of Florida. In fact I particularly enjoyed Fleming's depiction of mid-century west coast Florida. I've never been to Jamaica but Fleming has a flair for bringing its landscape to life in a book. As a travelogue, it's pretty exciting. Also, I liked that Bond kills bad guys when he has to, and when he's not fainting. There are moments of hardboiled Bond here that almost make up for the inept Bond elsewhere. Finally, the final showdown between Big and Bond was gloriously pulpy and suspenseful.

I first read this book when I was in 7th grade, not long before seeing Live and Let Die in the theater. As a kid, I can't tell you how much of an impact this book and other James Bond novels had on me. They were a leap from The Hardy Boys to real "adult" novels. So I have to consider that in rating the book as it is, warts and all.

When you were young and your heart was an open book, you used to say live and let live.

(You know you did)
(You know you did)
(You know you did)

Ah, yes, Mr Bond, for I am shaken and stirred by the level of violence within these pages compared to the film! Mr Big’s plan to kill 007 and Solitaire was not the same as in the movie, what they endured was horrible! Had the book been followed to the letter, LALD would not have been the PG action-adventure we all know! The story was toned down for the big screen and was made more comedic and audience friendly.

Sadly, there’s no Sheriff J.W. Pepper and his tobacco-chewin’ shenanigans in the original story which was a little disappointing! And also no 007 running across the backs of crocodiles in a swamp escaping the bad guys. Also disappointing! I preferred the subject in the book regarding the smuggling, (it was 17th-century gold coins from British territories, not heroine distribution) which again, was completely different to the film.

Also, who knew that Fleming could write so beautifully?! Not I! The descriptions and detail of the underwater world of the Caribbean, the weather, and general world building was superb. I am thoroughly impressed. Not that I’ll be reading any more espionage thrillers, mind, I just wanted to see what this was like in its original form. It wasn’t necessarily better than the movie, (it’s a childhood favourite, so I’m biased) it was just very different, I enjoyed it immensely.

Cue theme music (McCartney, not GnR) that lived in my head for the duration…

Live and Let Die….. da da da, da da da, da da, da da da, da da da, da daaaaaa!

Final note; Roger M007e was the best Bond, so charismatic.

Edit: December 19, 2018 This novel is really two and a half stars, not three, but Goodreads doesn't let me give half stars.

‘Live and Let Die’, the second book in the James Bond series, is both fun and awful at the same time. It is definitely a book written to satisfy the entertainment values of most male readers, particularly war veterans of the 1950’s. Political correctness was not yet invented when the novel was written, and education and general knowledge of other cultures was sparse then, gentle reader. Women characters in many books written by men up to and through more than half of the 20th century are often mentally thick as bricks and helpless, even if sometimes rather cute and brave in their brain-dead functionality and beauty; and non-white cultures are thought of as exotic and fascinating even if such cultures were considered primitive or peculiar. White liberal Westerners were definitely aware, though, Westerners had corrupted many non-white cultures with their own badness. Fleming clearly wrote spy thrillers to suit himself, his contemporary English readers, and his publishers.


In this novel, Bond’s nemesis is a criminal called Mr. Big, described in this conversation between M and Bond:


“Mr. Big,” said M., weighing his words, “is probably the most powerful negro criminal in the world. He is,” and he enumerated carefully, “the head of the Black Widow Voodoo cult and believed by that cult to be the Baron Samedi himself. (You’ll find out all about that here,” he tapped the folder, “and it’ll frighten the daylights out of you.) He is also a Soviet agent. And finally he is, and this will particularly interest you, Bond, a known member off Smersh.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a great negro criminal before,”said Bond, “Chinamen, of course, the men behind the opium trade. There’ve been some big-time Japs, mostly in pearls and drugs. Plenty of negroes mixed up in diamonds and gold in Africa, but always in a small way. They don’t seem to take to big business. Pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought except when they’ve drunk too much.”

“Our man’s a bit of an exception,” said M. “He’s not pure negro. Born in Haiti. Good dose of French blood. Trained in Moscow, too, as you see from the file. And the negro races are just beginning to throw up geniuses in all the professions - scientists, doctors, writers. It’s about time they turned out a great criminal. After all, there are 250,000,000 of them in the world. They’ve got plenty of brains and guts. And now Moscow’s taught one of them the technique.”

“I’d like to meet him,” said Bond. Then he added, mildly, “I’d like to meet any member of SMERSH.”


In three short paragraphs, Bond and M manage to sort of or flat out disparage three different races and five countries and one entire continent. I think I should point out a couple of things to younger folks: this book was published in 1954; many of the racial terms and erroneous or egregious stereotyping and police information revealed in the above conversation was not considered at all racist on any level in this era, and some of the crime information was true. The racial terms were part of the common terminology used by liberal and racist white English and American people to describe other races, as well as being reflective of what general information even educated Western outsiders knew about other foreign cultures and nationalities. Besides, if you read the above paragraphs carefully, you may notice as I did that the French, who are mostly white, seem to be assumed to be the main contributors to the worst characteristics of criminals of the world to Bond and M. The insinuation appears to be Mr. Big is so bad because of his French ancestry?

I know the gut reaction of many modern readers is probably, like,

: O

and some of you are

>: @


Anyway, these books really still are high-octane action thrillers, with tons of thrills and chills, and intensely graphic scenes, though brief, of torture and abuse. We Americans luv ‘em!

James Bond is sent to America to assist the FBI, the CIA and his best American friend, Felix Leiter, to investigate the possible discovery of the pirate ‘Bloody’ Morgan’s gold treasure. The treasure is rumored to be hidden in Jamaica, British territory. Gold coins from the supposed pirate’s treasure are turning up in New York City, specifically in Harlem, being sold and passed around by black people. Further investigation has revealed Mr. Big’s employees and businesses seem to be the original source of the gold coins. It is also learned Mr. Big recently bought Jamaican property, a little island reputed to have been Morgan’s hideout.

While Bond travels around America’s eastern seaboard leaving many bodies and tortured friends in his wake, we readers learn he doesn’t like our American food, our clothes, our cities, our trains, our insolent manners or our low-brow culture. These opinions happen to be author Ian Fleming’s opinions, too, gentle reader, per Wikipedia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_F...

Ian Fleming hated almost everything about America’s culture! To him, Americans were retarded mouth-breathers in the majority. In reading through various sources, I believe he actually resented our lack of British styling and cool. In 2016, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States by voters. Point taken.

Without any doubt this one is much better than the predecessor: faster and with a more interesting plot (more action).

I am glad I began reading James Bond series.

I really wanted to enjoy this book. While it was better written than Casino Royale, I was constantly distracted by the overt and implicit racism. Especially in the first few chapters taking place in Harlem. It’s rough. There’s also the misogyny that is a hallmark of all James Bond stories. Women in this book are ALWAYS referred to as girls.

It’s a shame too, because the final act in Jamaica is great, pulpy adventure and Fleming really starts to stretch his legs as a writer with some fantastically evocative prose (when he’s not hamstrung by his own white male British implicit bias).