So now I'm through with 'Guardian Angel' and I have to say ab-so-lute-ly fabulous material! Really outstanding, got me hooked with line and sinker. Others have stated it before me, this really has the potential to be the Ace Of Continuations.
Two things stand out for me particularly prominent with this book. First of all, while in fact a Bond novel it also has a really intriguing plot that works quite fine even if it wouldn't engage Bond at all. There is a lot of substance there that would make a decent plot in
any literary universe, not just necessarily Fleming's. The mixture of real-life events, diary entries and present day comment by Mrs Westbrook is splendidly done and works just fine.
That said, I feel especially the dialogue of Fleming's other characters, M, Bill Tanner and Moneypenny most convincing. Here I think Fleming's own dialogue he wrote for these characters is captured spot on. And I seldom have that feeling with the continuations. Perhaps it's easier with these characters as in Fleming's books they really only have rather little dialogue. Still, I can't say that I ever had this impression of 'This
is M/Tanner/Monepenny speaking' when reading Gardner or Benson. To some extent Amis got it
almost right to my ear. But only just almost; may be to do with the unfamiliar circumstances Tanner and M speak in 'Colonel Sun'. Anyway, in 'Guardian Angel' it's just 100 percent for me. Really outstanding, all the more so as Moneypenny's tone keeps authentic also in her diary entries.
'Guardian Angel' fleshes out Fleming's Secret Service and almost never seems to miss a beat there. While we get to see
lots of SIS backstage affairs that Fleming for the most part only hinted at, or briefly mentioned in throwaway sentences, the entire SIS, its organization, Service-speak, folklore, customs, dress-code are 100 percent proof Fleming from the famous 'Powder Vine' to the 'bloody' (Paymaster Captain) Troop. Remarkably, in spite of this, Moneypenny's Service feels a little bit more like a family than Bond's. But this is in no way a digression from the original. It's absolutely logic and consequential that the character of Moneypenny sees her surroundings and the confidential character of her tasks with a sentimental eye that Bond only rarely allowes himself to do (but that he obviously indulges in from time to time).
I really only have one single, minor complaint with 'Guardian Angel': I simply couldn't see M catching a RAF plane to haul in Bond after Tracy was killed and accompany him to a sea funeral in Royales les Eaux. I'd have bet a 30-year-old bottel of Laphroaig that M would have sent Tanner to do this. But there you see, my reading of M was false. He went himself.
A bit annoying to be proved wrong there, being a fan for 30 years...
