TOP TEN... BOND BOOKS

Ahead of Friday's release of Quantum Of Solace, we reveal our top ten James Bond books...

1. Moonraker (1955)
They may share characters, locations and plots, but Ian Fleming and Albert Broccolli’s James Bonds are very different beasts indeed. On screen, Bond has always been something of a hollowed-out shell, a bombastic action man who rarely displays the depth, humanity and vulnerability Fleming allowed his 007 to show. Moonraker sees this point writ large. In celluloid form, Fleming’s third novel is a ramshackle Star Wars rip-off which is comfortably the weakest of 007‘s 21 cinematic outings. On the page, however, it’s a grounded, melancholic tale which presents the reader with a very human hero, one who doesn’t even leave Britain, never mind the planet. That means no hover-gondolas, no rocket ships and no grandiose scheme to take the human race into space, just a painfully bruised Bond sighing his way through paperwork, covertly working his way into Hugo Drax’s lair and falling in love with Gala Brand, one of Fleming’s most complicated leading ladies. In a melancholic twist, she fails to be wooed by Bond‘s dangerous lifestyle in the sombre finale, and instead returns to her normal, far safer life. How something so subtle and nuanced could spawn the abomination cinema screens witnessed is a mystery. Time for a remake, perhaps?

2. From Russia With Love (1957)
Coming after Diamonds Are Forever’s poor critical reception, Fleming intended this to be 007’s final outing, and wanted to give him a fitting send-off. He certainly did that. From Russia With Love is a triumph of a novel, perhaps the only Bond book to transcend its pulpy roots and rank alongside the more serious, less fantastical thrillers Fleming‘s peers created. Shot through with an air of death and finality, it spends the first half of its weighty page count deep in the bowels of SMERSH introducing us to the Russian organisation’s odious officials, primary among them those magnificent creations Rosa Klebb and Red Grant. Fleming’s portrayal of Grant as a cold, mechanical assassin is utterly chilling and perhaps the birth of the modern fictional serial killer, while his descriptions of Klebb ooze with grotesquery. However, it‘s the landscapes that steal the show, the renderings of Istanbul and the Orient Express (where most of the rest of the story takes place) dripping with foreboding menace. The novel culminates with a showdown between Klebb and Bond and a closing line that is among the best Fleming ever wrote. Thankfully, it would not be the last…

3. Doctor No (1958)
Doctor No is a novel written by an author brimming with confidence. Vindicated by the success of From Russia With Love, Fleming embarked on the fifth Bond novel reinvigorated, and what he created is a bright and breezy piece of work; a wonderfully simple, but still hugely satisfying, read set almost entirely in his beloved Jamaica. Before we get there though, we are stuck in London, and Fleming takes huge pleasure in the drabness of the capital, describing it as a windswept wasteland in which M stews as he grumpily hands Bond what he dismissively calls a “holiday in the sun”. As if to prove the point, Fleming describes the Jamaican-set passages in stunning terms. The island’s lush greens and deep blues pop from the page, the tropical warmth glows in every syllable and the lovely Honey Ryder seems so astonishingly beautiful it’s almost a let down to watch the film and see Ursula Andress rather than the angelic Venus Fleming describes here emerge from the sea. The ending, which involves a bizarre fight with a giant squid, almost undermines the whole endeavour with its ridiculousness. But Fleming’s prose is so rich and detailed that even the most absurd of sequences proves, like the book as a whole, utterly compelling.

4. For Your Eyes Only (1960)
Taken from the anthology of the same name, this melancholic short story was adapted almost verbatim for the 1981 film. Bond is tasked with assassinating a hitman, only to find his path obstructed by another assassin, who turns out to be the daughter of the people the killer bumped off. However, while the film is a rather drab affair, Fleming lights up the dark subject matter with some glorious descriptive prose. The opening scenes, in which the elderly couple are killed in their home in Jamaica, are filled with the same luxurious detailed descriptions of the island as Doctor No, only here Fleming indulges his love of the wildlife, describing one bird in detail so rich you‘re almost convinced the story will be about it instead of Bond. The rest of the tale takes place on the American-Canadian border and while there a lonely Bond reflects on why he is on this mission and what gives him the right to take the life of a man who has done nothing to harm him. Great, compact stuff, which, in an added bonus, comes sans the Maggie Thatcher cameo.

5. Casino Royale (1953)
Here’s where it all began. The book that defined an icon, made a name for its author and would go on to make cinema history, Casino Royale is the most legendary of Bond novels, and not just because it’s the first. Featuring devious villainy, tense card games and, naturally, a beautiful girl, it’s astonishing to think that (rubbish 60s spoof aside) it took over half a century to bring this story to the big screen. But it is perhaps a good thing that we had to wait so long. With any other Bond at the helm, a cinematic version of Casino Royale wouldn’t have worked. Bond here is too normal, too every day (he described himself as a civil servant) to have been properly fleshed out by Connery’s charm, Moore’s cheek, Dalton's intensity or Brosnan's suaveness. But Craig has a realism that illuminates the human, cynical (that iconic last line from the film is taken directly from the book), bruised, but still effortlessly cool Bond that Fleming describes here. Good thing too. Because Fleming's Bond will always be the best.

6. Live and Let Die (1954)
Perhaps the most controversial and dated of the 007 novels, Live and Let Die finds Fleming dropping the N bomb. Repeatedly. Deplorable certainly, but even in our politically sensitive times the frequent and highly unpleasant use of that particular word doesn’t make Live and Let Die any less enjoyable. A scuzzy, sweaty crime tale that features the grizzly meeting between Felix Leiter and a bunch of sharks that would inspire one of Licence to Kill’s best sequences, Live and Let Die is Fleming at his pulsating best. Sentence and chapter length are short, the words are never minced (frequently to the book‘s detriment), chosen as they are with huge precision for maximum effect, and the action is swift and punchy. Indeed, more than a spy book, Live and Let Die is an excellent action novel, one that comes with the obligatory bonuses of exotic locations, mouth-watering food and gorgeous women, including Solitaire, who comes across as a far more interesting character here than she does in the film. Another 007 outing that could (with careful censorship) benefit from a do-over.

7. The Spy Who Loved Me (1962)
If Live and Let Die displays Fleming’s racial ignorance, Spy Who Loved Me shows his ignorance towards women. An unusual interlude between Thunderball and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, this novella is barely about Bond at all, 007 not appearing until the final few chapters. Instead, we focus on Vivienne Michel, a luckless young woman who stumbles into trouble and has to be saved by the spy. The book proved highly controversial upon release, being reviled by critics for it lack of Bond and, more importantly, its line about women enjoying ‘semi-rape’. Even in context, a line like that is pretty unforgivable, but leaving such slips aside, SWLM is actually a pretty bold move, one that engrosses with its unusualness and complicated leading lady. The story was, of course, utterly changed for the screen, and it’s unlikely to ever be adapted wholesale. But characters and scenarios could be cherry-picked to form the basis of future films, particularly the grotesque mobster villains Sluggsy and Horror.

8. You Only Live Twice (1964)
The culmination of Fleming’s ‘Blofeld trilogy’, You Only Live Twice is a novel tinged with melancholy, the book where it really becomes clear that the Bond saga is gradually winding to an end. Dripping with death, this magnificently macabre story follows on directly from the devastating end of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and finds Bond tracking Blofeld down to Japan, where the SPECTRE head has set up a fiendish Garden of Death. Very different from the film in terms of plot, then, but the dubious race relations remain, with Bond, like in the film, disguising himself as a Japanese, and, even worse, Fleming portraying the people of Japan as death-obsessed crackpots. What stays with you though is the melancholy. The Land of the Rising Sun seems steeped in sadness for Fleming, and, as Bond ponders his future in the novel's closing pages, it's difficult not to feel a twinge of sadness for both the character and the author who created him.

9. Quantum of Solace (1960)
Those still wondering why this exotic title has been chosen for Bond 22 should read the short story it is borrowed from. Fleming sends Bond to a dinner party, where his only refuge from boredom is a story told to him by a fellow guest of government official Phillip Masters’ unhappy marriage to an air hostess. The relationship begins well, but gradually deteriorates and soon she is cheating on him. Humiliated and stripped of any kind of basic human compassion towards his one-time love, Masters cuts off relations with her and eventually leaves her with nothing. Bond leaves the party contemplating the story and concluding that real life is far more interesting than his fantastical adventures. Sounds like a great way to describe the series’ new direction to me…

10. Goldfinger (1959)
One of Fleming’s most uneven novels, Goldfinger would have been higher in this list had the final part measured up to the first two. Told in three segments, the seventh Bond novel is a blast for the most part, a tense double-header between Bond and Goldfinger in which each man tries to work out exactly what the other is up to without giving his own secrets away. Sadly, as we all know, the story does not come to a close in such style, instead exploding into a bombastic heist of Fort Knox which tests plausibility to its limit and turns on a huge contrivance, with Goldfinger forcing Bond to help him with his scheme when it would have been easier to just kill him. Baffling. Still, those first two parts are incredibly strong, finding Fleming at his bold best and Bond at most normal. 007 on the Tube? Shocking. Poshitively shocking.

WATCHING, READING, LISTENING TO

The staff of Entertainment Manchester reveal what's been entertaining them over the last seven days...

THE EDITOR

WATCHING: The last film I saw was The Strangers at the cinema. To be honest, we would rather have watched the similar Eden Lake, but that wasn't on anymore by the time we actually got round to going. The Strangers was well-made though and scary enough in a fairly obvious and predictable way, though it was rather unpleasant and pointless too. All in all, not bad, not great. The final episode of The Wire was much, much better, of course and a fitting finale to the best TV series I've ever seen.

READING: The House Of The Dead. No, it's not a novelisation of the arcade horror shoot 'em up or Uwe Boll's film adaptation, it's by Dostoyevsky and is a fictionalised account of his time in a Siberian prison. It's about as cheery as that sounds, but it's a great book so far and despite the subject matter it's very easy read. I finished by Sherlock Holmes odyssey a few weeks ago, just in time to discover that Guy Ritchie is making a Holmes film. Which is a really depressing prospect.

LISTENING TO: At the moment, lots of music by the genius that is Mike Patton. From his time as Faith No More singer to the quirky and fascinating Mr Bungle to the even more unconventional stuff he's done since FNM called it day, he's never less than interesting. One of his best projects has been the metal supergroup Fantomas, who have made some very unconventional music, like their collection of movie theme covers Director's Cut and the 74 minute single-track Delìrium Cordia, which is one of the scariest and weirdest pieces of music you'll ever hear.



THE WRITER

WATCHING: Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends. It may be cheesy and silly when compared with some of today's cartoons, but this 1980s Spider-Man show is, for me, the finest animated adaptation of a comic book outside of the Fleischers’ 1930s Superman shorts. Our friendly neighbourhood wallcrawler teams up with Iceman and Firestar (the Amazing Friends of the title) to take on the likes of the Green Goblin, Kraven the Hunter and Doctor Doom in a series of fantastically outlandish adventures. I‘ve only watched three episodes so far, and Spidey has already stopped dinosaurs, a megalomaniacal pensioner and a bid to poison New York‘s water supply. Brilliantly, there are still two more seasons to come!

READING: In terms of reading, I'm really just getting to the end of the books I've been going through for the last few weeks. Goldfinger, which I'd heard ends quite poorly, is still going strong into the final few chapters, with Bond and Goldfinger now at complete loggerheads after playing cat and mouse with each other for the first two thirds of the book. Meanwhile I’ve finished Star Wars Expanded Universe novel Heir to the Empire. A sequel to Return of the Jedi, it takes place five years after the Battle of Endor and author Timothy Zahn has set things up nicely for follow-ons The Dark Rising and The Last Command by putting the New Republic on the brink of civil war by the end of this book. Cracking stuff.

LISTENING TO: After being unsure on the first few listens, I've finally come around to the new Bond theme. Another Way To Die doesn't rank alongside the best Bond songs, lacking the kind of memorable hooks Goldfinger, Nobody Does It Better and Live and Let Die have, but it does have a real sense of drama to it that means it should work well in the title sequence - and that is far more important than it being a good standalone single. Plus, it finishes with the words 'Bang, bang, bang, bang'. And anything that ends quite as boldly as that is undoubtedly worthy of a place in 007 history.