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Interview: Raymond Benson on Felix Leiter


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#1 Righty007

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Posted 16 July 2008 - 04:42 AM

Raymond Benson recently spoke to FelixLeiter.com. Here's a link to the interview.

#2 Jeff007

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Posted 16 July 2008 - 05:12 AM

Nice work, Chris. Some very insightful questions there.

#3 Blofeld's Cat

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Posted 16 July 2008 - 06:54 AM

A second anthology is possible?

Nice interview, Chris. :tup:

#4 FLEMINGFAN

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Posted 16 July 2008 - 07:08 AM

Excellent, and informative, interview.

#5 Trident

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Posted 16 July 2008 - 07:45 AM

Very good interview, most intriguing. :tup:



CW: John Gardner created Cedar Leiter, Felix’s daughter, for For Special Services. Did you ever consider bringing her back as a CIA contact in any of your Bond novels?

RB: No. My directive from IFP (they were called Glidrose when I began working for them) was that I could use or ignore anything from the other continuation authors, as long as I was faithful to anything Fleming wrote. I wasn’t against Cedar—I quite like For Special Services—but I didn’t see a reason to bring her back. I can’t remember if Bond asks about her. Maybe I had it in and Glidrose cut it. I really can’t remember and haven’t looked at the book in a while.



That decision I never understood. Bond's mission from FSS is mentioned but Cedar Leiter is entirely omitted in TFOD. This didn't make sense at all. While I for one can easily live without Cedar (liked the idea of a Leiter daughter; hated the actual Dale-Arden-stand-in that Cedar turned out to be; all screaming, crying rescue-me-James!, brrr), there is just no logic in mentioning that mission without mentioning Leiter's daughter. Would have been better to cut the whole FSS episode from TFOD.