GOLDFINGER

GOLDFINGER

Bond #7

- Ian Fleming -

Now this is classic Bond material.

The story starts with the overconfident, macho, superior attitude of Bond bragging about his latest covert mission where he succeeded in killing some evil doer, against all the odds. Then, on the journey home he runs into Mr. Dupont (a character from the first book, Casino Royale). This leads to a card game where the classic bond villian is introduced - Goldfinger. The little guy with an oversided football shaped head who is obsessed with gold.

They end up meeting again in England and one thing leads to another and they duel, a head to head showdown...on the golf course! Twenty or so pages of intense action all based around drivers and putters and how to hit a ball out of the sand bunker. Very undercover agent! Of course, it just shows that Bond can do anything.

After this gentlemanly combat, we meet Goldfinger's body guard. A half mute Korean man who has hands and feet of steel. He can bash through two by fours and elegant stair bannisters with the flick of his wrist. A very deadly guy. How could Bond ever defeat this guy in a hand to hand battle to the death? You know it's coming at some point.

From there the backstory fleshes out and it turns out Goldfinger has ties to SMERSH, that evil communist organization that is bent on taking over the free world. The adventure Bond goes on to capture this guy takes him across the world. I won't give away the ending, I will only say it ends in the typical Bond fashion. Him, a lady, and a bottle of champagne.

I have to say, after reading a couple of Bond books now I'm still baffled at how often he is captured by the enemy. Instead of the world's greatest secret agent, Bond should be labelled the world's best escape artist. By the end of this book Bond has been captured by the evil villain twice and managed to escape in a couple of dramatic and epic ways. Similar in scale to the world domination plans of the villain. As in, unbelievable and ridiculous. Let's just summarize some of the evil plots and escapes. We have a plan to kill tens of thousands of people and break into Fort Knox to steal thousands of tons of gold. On the other hand, an escape from a plane at thirty thousand feet by smashing a window out (thereby sucking bad guys out into space) and crash landing in the ocean and living to tell about it with only a few bruises.

In other words - awesome!

Rating : READ