James Bond - THE SPY WHO LOVED ME

 THE SPY WHO LOVED ME

The Spy Who Loved Me - James Bond was the spy

- Ian Fleming -

I get that authors might feel pigeonholed when they write a successful series, always writing the same character and story over and over. I get that they might want to try something new. It seems that Fleming tried to do something new with The Spy Who Loved Me... but, it also seemed like he wanted to hedge his bets and keep the Bond name attached. 

It was interesting to see Bond as a secondary character in a James Bond novel. However, it was the main character (not Bond but a nice young lady named Vivian) that didn't live up to the Bond standard. She was weak. There were hints and tales of this Vivian girl doing adventurous things in her life, in her past, in her spare time. But, when it came down to do or die, she almost died.

I think it was the authour's fault here. Fleming tried to tell the story from the point of view of a woman...and it didn't quite come across as believable. I get it. Fleming was a man of the fifties, wrote about macho men. He even seemed to believe that woman were frail and needed directing by a man. I give him grace though, he was trying something new. And it half worked. The story was interesting and I made it through the book at a good clip. It was just some of the descriptions, or the thoughts that this Vivian had were...not believable. 

Like I said, the book is good. I would say read most of the other Bond books before you pick up this one. But, if you are a die hard Bond fan, this is one to add to the collection. That's mostly why I'm keeping it. I have a bunch of Bond on my bookshelf right now. But, I can always find room for an early sixties printing of a Bond book!

MORE BOND REVIEWS - https://bookwormsfeastofbooks.blogspot.com/2017/04/dr-no-james-bond-novel.html

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

Agent 6

AGENT 6

- Tom Rob Smith -

An interesting 'thriller' that kept me engaged right until the end. Then it faltered. The ending was a bit lackluster and felt too open ended. I guess I thought there would be more. However, the steps taken to get there more than made up for it.

I took this book out of the library b/c of my 'read books by Smith author's' challenge. It looked cool and sounded like a good spy novel so I gave it a whirl. The story starts with Leo, a secret police agent in communist Russia in the fifties. He has a chance encounter with this beautiful, intelligent lady and ends up marrying her. His life changes as he turns from a hardened agent into a family man of sorts. His wife and daughters makes a monumental trip to the US at the peak of the cold war on a goodwill soft-politics type mission and it all turns bad. The wife is murdered and there is a huge political incident. It is covered up and lies are told. From that point on in the book Leo's only mission in life is to find out how and who killed his wife.

We then find Leo in Afghanistan in the eighties, when Russia invaded. The problems they faced are the exact same one's reported by Nato forces today. From there he manages to defect and make his way to the US, closer to his goal of finding the killer.

In the US he uses some of his old undercover agent spy tricks to uncover what happened the night his wife was murdered. He manages to track down the exact person who was responsible for her death - Agent 6. He confronts him, almost kills him, then the book quickly wraps up with his return to Russia.

I really liked the progression of the story, it was a quick trip through a bit of communist Russia's history. I ended up liking Leo, even though he was a cold character. But, it was that ending that just left me hanging. Almost the entire book was Leo working towards a goal. Then when the goal was accomplished the book should have ended, but, it didn't. It dragged on for a bit too long; open ended, no goal, sad, a bit cliche?

RATING: READ

The Bourne Supremacy

The Bourne Supremacy

- Robert Ludlum -

The second installment of the Bourne series is again full of action. However, the old proverb - about sequels never being as good as the original - is true.

Wordy! This book just has too many words. It could be a quick two or three hundred page fast movin' action packed paperback, instead of the 600 page mammoth it turned into. Now, there were many scenes that put you on the edge of your seat and kept you turning those 600 pages. There were the expected car chases, the identity changes, the occasional explosions and gun battles that I was expecting (and hoping for). But, there was also so much more...pages to read that is. Pages and pages of dialogue that seemed to drag on and on and on...like one of those phone messages you might get, you know that ones that time out they are so long...

Hey! Hello? Oh, you must not be home? Oh well, it's me. Me! Haha. Calling on my cell. I was calling to set up a meeting time. So, I'll leave a message I guess, haha. Call me on my cell and hopefully you will get me and won't have to leave a message and I won't have to call you back and leave a message haha. Anyway, again just had a moment so I thought I'd call. You know I forget sometimes, so when I do remember I just call. But, looks like you are not home...

You get the idea, a whole lot of blabbering, repeating, and droning on. At points while reading I wanted to yell at the book, "get to the point already! Or, at least move on to a car chase or something!"

I also found the entire storyline a bit too unbelievable, even for an over the top spy thriller. In this novel an assassin has been murdering top Hong Kong business men and diplomats, all the while leaving the calling card of Jason Bourne. The copy cat had to be stopped. The FBI/CIA guys get together and form a plan to motivate the real Jason Bourne to come out of retirement (aka witness protection program) and take on this killer. He is the only person in the world with enough skill to do it.

The plan is to kidnap his wife, whom you may remember as the tough as nails Canadian economist from the first novel? The plan goes a bit haywire after Marie escapes. Jason turns crazy thinking his wife is dead...all making great fodder for an explosive story. Unfortunately, the story gets bogged down with the long drawn out conversations between the government/FBI/CIA folks and the Hong Kong government guys. There conversations try to tell a bigger story about the Chinese wanting to cause a major crisis in Hong Kong so they can take it back over. However, there is a real chance this will turn into a something much bigger - WWIII!!

A big far fetched you say? I was lost too. After reading the 300 or so pages outlining the collapse of the East I was really bored, annoyed, and had eye strain. This, consequently, left me with the feeling that this book was really slow and not that good overall.

Another bone I have to pick with Ludlum is that error on Canadian geography! He writes that Marie is a tough ranch girl and their family has a ranch in Calgary. Makes sense, there are ranches out in Calgary. Calgary is in the province of Alberta which is wide open ranch country. Where the mistake comes up is that Ludlum keeps mentioning the ranch is in Ontario (not Alberta!) Every time he wrote something about Marie being a tough Ontario ranch girl I would cringe. I'm still left wondering how an editor did not catch something like this?

Rating: Do Not Read*

*Unless you are working on increasing your page count, let's say if you are in a contest such as 'who can read the most pages this month'.

THE BOURNE IDENTITY

THE BOURNE IDENTITY

-Robert Ludlum-

This was another book I casually tossed into a box at an auction/barn sale. $5 to fill a box with books makes you prone to grabbing anything that looks the least bit interesting or a book you may have heard of at some point in your life. The Bourne Identity was one of those titles I had heard of, from the blockbuster movie...apparently they were based on these books? I have not seen the movie yet, but I've always wanted to. So, what better way to experience the movie than to read the book. As anyone who reads a lot knows - the book is always better than the movie! Anyway, this name recognition was what made me pick up this book; I'm so glad I did.

I try and give a book 100 pages or so before I give up on it. I'll say, I had no problem reaching 100 on this one. It has taken me a bit longer than usual to reach page 100 for a couple of reasons. One, it is almost Xmas so my reading time has drastically decreased due to the demands of the season, and B) I find I have to really concentrate; read every word. No skimming in this book. I found in a few places the action was so fast paced, things changed in the blink of an eye, if I speed read a paragraph (even a sentence in some cases), I'm was lost. I had to backtrack to find how we got to this brand new place. It really showed how lazy I reader I must be, how often I glaze over words...what else have I been missing?

I have read a couple of similar action packed 'spy' novels, but, this one has far exceeded them all (which racks up to at least a dozen or so). There were countless surprises and shocks, but, intermixed was the logic that made it all believable. Ludlum throws a few small nuggets of information in brief conversations that later come back to explain otherwise unbelievable situations. A small example would be Bourne making the mistake of casually mentioning to his trustworthy banker that his stay in Zurich was nice, especially the view from his room overlooking a lake. Later on the when the goons, who are out to kill him, show up at his hotel Ludlum brings back that conversation about the hotel overlooking the lake. Since there are only a couple of hotels overlooking a lake it seems plausible that he could have been found. The small details like this keep me the reader engaged in the story. Furthermore, making me keep tabs myself on what's being said and who's saying it. I find I get deeper and deeper into the deception and mystery the more I read, the more I thought about it. The book was full of twists and turns, big and small, that made me want to keep chugging through the pages.

The story is centred around Jason Bourne. He takes a bullet in the head and it injures his brain, leading to amnesia. Are you thinking, haha that amnesia story line is used so often in sitcoms for cheap laughs? Not a laughing matter in this book. I found instead of making me laugh it took me in, took me on the journey with Bourne as he tried to find himself...it really added to the plot of deception and lies because you really had no idea what should happen. As in, who are the 'good' guys, who are the 'bad' guys. It really worked with this type of thriller plot. Back to the story, Bourne goes from knowing nothing about himself to finding out he has some hidden talents and instincts that seem to be of a darker nature - crime, fighting, manipulation...even killing! He has a wild journey through Europe (aren't the best thriller novels set in Europe?) finding out about hidden Swiss bank accounts, assassination plots, and his talent for getting out of near death situations. For a good chunk of the first section of the book he is being chased by mysterious thugs out to kill him. This goes on for pages and pages, at around page 100 he has been shot 8 or 10 times and is on the verge of death. Luckily for him there is a kind hearted Canadian there to save him!

Yes, I said Canadian! You have to love it when an international spy novel has a Canuck playing a major role. In reality though, this character was used as a convenient hostage and human shield by Bourne and put in many dangerous situations. This character should be traumatized for life after this, BUT, bless her heart this caring Canadian rescues Bourne from certain death as he lay bleeding out on the street. She helps even though she was beaten, abused, and on the verge of being executed herself all because Bourne kidnapped her. Ah, good ol' Canadian. If you are sensing a love story forming you may be right...which is the part of the book I find completely ridiculous! But, I'm willing to overlook this for a couple of reasons. One, the rest of the book is mind blowing, and B) Ludlum picked a Canadian over every other nationality in the world.

After the initial mad rush of page after page of action packed chasing and shooting the book slows down a little. The middle section of the book is where Bourne starts piecing together his true identity. Although there is not as much heart pumping action, and Bourne does not get shot anymore, the page turning desire does not cease. Clue after clue leads Bourne towards finding out who he is, where he is from, and why it seem the entire underworld is out to get him. This is where the amnesia plot plays a key role. As Bourne gathers all of these clues we, the reader, are piecing everything together with him...in one way, it's almost like we are Bourne. Then we are given a shocker, a clue that Bourne does not know. This information changes our whole perspective on the story - on who Bourne is and why it seems everyone is trying to kill him.

The last section of the book is the climax, which means lots of suspense and action. All of the loose ends are tied up and we are all led to the same conclusion as to who Jason Bourne really is. Then in the last dozen pages the hero (Bourne) and the villain (Carlos) square off. Bourne is shot again and Carlos gets away. This is the ideal ending because it leaves everything open...I'm left wanting, desiring, craving the next book! Thank you very much Ludlum, I didn't get the Bourne Supremacy - the next installment of this series - in my $5 box of books.

I mentioned earlier that I thought reading the book would be better than watching the movie. I'm sure there are many out there that argue maybe in this case watching the movie, with all it's special effects, might add to the action. But, I find I've taken so much time reading this book that I've gotten so much out of it. Instead of all the small details of the plot and mystery being condensed into a couple of hours I've managed to stretch this out for weeks. I've spent hours and hours reading and thinking about the book...which I think makes for a better overall experience.

Rating: READ!

Book Club Questions:

• If you had amnesia what instincts would show up for you?
• Swiss banks. Ever been to one? You think they are really that cold and secretive?
• Is the action believable to you? For eg, getting shot 10 times in many different occasions in one night and living to tell about it! Is the writing so strong that this doubt never crosses your mind.
• This book was written 30 years ago. Other than the lack of internet and cell phones, does the plot and story seem relevant in today's world?