5 replies to this topic

[Jriv71]

Go ahead, starting ripping me a new one. I like this book. I do. I just left another thread discussing Gardner, and a recurring thought came to me...I like Gardner much better when he tries to be like LeCarre (or ends up that way), rather than like Fleming (which he cannot), or the screenwriters who need to give the Bond villain a limp, or a deformity, or the overdone evil lair, with a helo-pad.

Fleming never overdid the now-famous hollowed out volcano, that was the writers/producers of the films. When Gardner's books do that, I tend to tune out a bit. This book was reminiscent of NLF or NDMB (not completely, just in small ways) or some of LeCarre's stuff (of course not nearly as complex); it just had James Bond acting like a spy, or looking for Russians or other spies. (He's a spy.) In the wake of so-called 'Glasnost' there are now good Russians and bad Russians, throw in the Holocaust angle (always fun), and Bond working with the French, KGB and Mossad, and you don't need to over-do the bad guy.

Go ahead, Zencat, tear me apart, this is probably my favorite Gardner novel. It's the only one I remembered much about after having read them over a decade ago. I can usually gauge my interest by, how long it takes me to read it, and this was a page-turner. Never fell asleep reading it on the subway.

[Grubozaboyschikov]

Hey! I'm with you! TMFB rules! I've told this before, and I'm telling this now. Ok, it has some regular Gardner flaws, like his favourite loose ends and far-fetched double-crosses, and I admit that the villain is somewhat weak, but on the other hand, it IS a spy-thriller (!), full of thrilling cloak-n-dagger details.

Some people say the pace of the plot is too slow. Hey! Those must reread CR and MR. Too fast for you?

Besides, I

[Blofeld's Cat]

[quote]Originally posted by Grubozaboyschikov
Besides, I

[zencat]

Originally posted by Jriv71
Go ahead, Zencat, tear me apart, this is probably my favorite Gardner novel...

I won't tear you apart, Jriv71. TMFB has its fans. Even Gardner said it was his favorite book, because it is the one that is most like his non-Bond work. I think even Raymond Benson rates it high.

I've read it twice and I just can't seem to get into it. That doesn't mean it's a bad Bond book. It just doesn't work for me. But I

[Neil S. Bulk]

I remember the one time I read this. I had only a few pages left at one point, and I couldn't force myself to do it. I did read them later, but at a different sitting. I was completely bored by this book.

Neil

[Jriv71]

Thanks for the link, Zencat. Sums it up pretty well, I think. The bottom line is, it's plot-driven, not necessarily based on a ton of action. That's OK, too, James Bond stories are generally like that! But it was well-conceived and thought-out, and there was a believable villain (I love the villain who doesn't think what he's doing is wrong, because his motivation is geniune.)

The author of the article points out that people who don't like TMFB say that he doesn't seem like Bond. No, not the Bond who'd starting pilfering grapes off of a corpse during a gun-fight, or use a jet-pack for transportation. I love that Bond also, that's the stuff that got me into Bond. But Bond, as he was created and intended, I think, was fairly well re-created by Gardner, for a brief moment in time in The Man From Barbarossa.