Live and Let Die

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Despite that, there are some bright spots—Fleming was very familiar with Jamaica, owning a house there and spending a great deal of his time swimming, diving, and fishing while he was in residence at Goldeneye, his Jamaican home. The scenery and details of this setting are extremely well realized in Live and Let Die. The descriptions of fish during Bond’s dives are fabulous, too. Unsurprisingly, the Jamaican portions of the book are far superior to those set in the United States. [I also thought that the fishy method of smuggling was an ingenious invention and I loved the shark tank!] Adrian] Sinclair, an award-winning documentary-maker, said: “That became part of that collection of stories that George and Paul would tell over the years, and nobody ever corrected it.” Mr. Big is the whole reason that Bond has flown to America. Gold coins, Rose Noble of Edward IV, have been surfacing from the pirate Henry “Bloody” Morgan’s treasure that was never found and by rights belongs to the British government. They have traced it to Mr. Big’s operation and agents have disappeared so it is time for 007 to be sent to find the pipeline for the treasure and if need be put a kibosh on Mr. Big’s organization. Fleming takes us from London, to NY, to Florida, and for the final meeting between Mr. Big and Bond to the island of Jamaica. Mr. Big sees himself as a trailblazer and it wouldn’t be a Bond if the villain didn’t give a speech.

Wow. Forty years really makes a lot of difference in how things look. I never liked Simon Templar...I mean Roger Moore!...as Bond. From the get-go, I found him too TV for the role of the big screen's biggest baddest spy. What was charming and roguish in other performances was slippery and oleaginous in Moore's performances. But I had no memory of how revoltingly racist this film was. I shudder to say it, but I was probably blind to it because it was...ulp...the way I saw the lily-white privileged Republican world I lived in. Then Bond condescends to pop Jane's cherry and takes away he rpowers, which the sexist sociopath clearly doesn't believe in; things go further and further downhill as Geoffrey Holder does a horrifying turn as a voodoo priest in the most ridiculous half-white makeup...well. Our man’s a bit of an exception,” said M. “He’s not pure negro. Born in Haiti. Good dose of French blood. Trained in Moscow, too, as you see from the file. And the negro races are just beginning to throw up geniuses in all the professions - scientists, doctors, writers. It’s about time they turned out a great criminal. After all, there are 250,000,000 of them in the world. They’ve got plenty of brains and guts. And now Moscow’s taught one of them the technique.” Another cool final line to a chapter on p191. ‘The stars winked down their cryptic morse and he had no key to their cipher.’

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Besides the cringe-worthy quantities of racial slur, this is the book where Bond expresses his views of the female lead character - Solitaire - as his "prize" and that this is the only way that he is able to see her. Hmmm. Edit: December 19, 2018 This novel is really two and a half stars, not three, but Goodreads doesn't let me give half stars. So, I got comfortable in my seat on the cross-Atlantic flight and opened my book. A few chapters into the story it suddenly dawned on me... He sensed a lonely childhood on some great decaying plantation, an echoing ‘Great House’ slowly falling into disrepair and being encroached on by the luxuriance of the tropics. The parents dying, and the property being sold. The companionship of a servant or two and an equivocal life in lodgings in the capital. The beauty which was her only asset and the struggle against the shady propositions to be a ‘governess’, a ‘companion’, a ‘secretary’, all of which meant respectable prostitution. Then the dubious, unknown steps into the world of entertainment. The evening stint at the nightclub with the mysterious act which, among people dominated by magic, must have kept many away from her and made her a person to be feared. And then, one evening, the huge man with the grey face sitting at a table by himself. The promise that he would put her on Broadway. The chance of a new life, of an escape from the heat and the dirt and the solitude. Bond has a nightmare and ‘whimpered and sweated in his sleep.’ No, I’m sorry, Bond does not whimper.

BUT - and this is important to point out - he fantasizes about marrying Vesper, retiring from the Service for her, and spending the rest of his life with her. Solitaire is just a temporary fling - a sexual diversion that he deserves because he is Bond. He never says any of the romantic stuff to her that he said to Vesper. He instead, literally thinks of her as a prize to be enjoyed after he's done with his mission. He refers to her as "the prize" and "his prize" multiple times in the book - she's a sexual object to him and nothing more. his lyrical descriptions of an island he clearly knows and loves, which is clearly Jamaica. The tone of this part of the book is slower, the descriptions beautiful, vs. the Harlem or Florida sections. Exciting parts: Bond fighting octopi, barracuda and sharks underwater with a harpoon gun. The octopus battle is extremely fun. At the end, Big decides to kill Bond and Solitaire by tying them together, face to face, butt-naked and dragging them behind the boat through a coral reef so that they get all bloody and sharks and barracuda eat them. Philip Day of The Sunday Times noted "How wincingly well Mr Fleming writes"; [59] the reviewer for The Times thought that "[t]his is an ingenious affair, full of recondite knowledge and horrific spills and thrills—of slightly sadistic excitements also—though without the simple and bold design of its predecessor". [70] Elizabeth L Sturch, writing in The Times Literary Supplement, observed that Fleming was "without doubt the most interesting recent recruit among thriller-writers" [71] and that Live and Let Die "fully maintains the promise of... Casino Royale." [71] Tempering her praise of the book, Sturch thought that "Mr Fleming works often on the edge of flippancy, rather in the spirit of a highbrow", [71] although overall she felt that the novel "contains passages which for sheer excitement have not been surpassed by any modern writer of this kind". [71] The reviewer for The Daily Telegraph felt that "the book is continually exciting, whether it takes us into the heart of Harlem or describes an underwater swim in shark-infested waters; and it is more entertaining because Mr Fleming does not take it all too seriously himself". [72] George Malcolm Thompson, writing in The Evening Standard, believed Live and Let Die to be "tense; ice-cold, sophisticated; Peter Cheyney for the carriage trade". [23]The British Secret Service agent James Bond is sent by his superior, M, to New York City to investigate "Mr Big", real name Buonaparte Ignace Gallia. Bond's target is an agent of the Soviet counterintelligence organisation SMERSH, and an underworld voodoo leader who is suspected of selling 17th-century gold coins to finance Soviet spy operations in America. These gold coins have been turning up in the Harlem section of New York City and in Florida and are suspected of being part of a treasure that was buried in Jamaica by the pirate Henry Morgan. As in all Bond books, the best part is the villain's speech(es). When Bond is captured (usually once, but in this book it's twice) the villain always ties Bond up and then gives a long speech about how he's so great, Bond will never defeat him, there will be no rescue, blah blah blah. These are always epic, very entertaining speeches, with Bond occasionally breaking in to make a smartass comment or two. They are very cinematic and fun. Best part(s) of the book BY FAR.