One last Bond review before the end of the year. This is the one where 007 travels to the exotic faraway land of Upstate New York to watch horse racing. Wait, what...? I was originally going to read the whole series in a year, but I'll have to settle for just four instead. The first three were fantastic surprises, each better than the last, and despite some problematic handling of women and race, they held up to modern aesthetics and sensibilities better than I could've ever hoped. Much better than the old movies. They read as if they were written specifically for the Daniel Craig, Casino Royale fans. No small feat, when some sixty years separate them. And then there's Diamond Are Forever. Which reads more like... A middling Roger Moore movie (which is ironic since the film version was actually Sean Connery's last performance as Bond). Diamonds are being smuggled out of Africa (newsflash!) into America, and Bond is tasked with infiltrating the pipeline undercover because no one knows his face in the US. That's how he meets the beautiful but cold Tiffany Case who shadows him on his first smuggle. Yes, the femme fatale in the book about diamonds is named Tiffany, as in Tiffany's, because: diamonds, obviously. This is only marginally more acceptable when we learn in-story (diagetically if you want to learn a new word!) that Tiffany Case's mother actually named her after a case from Tiffany's when her father ran out on her or something. But we'll come back to her! Bond successfully smuggles the diamonds and receives payment by way of a fixed horse race up in Saratoga. Instead of giving him a suspicious pile of cash and no alibi, the logic is that he can show a receipt for the bet and it all suddenly looks legal. Instead he runs into old pal (and personal favorite) Felix Leiter who got so bit up by a barracuda back in Live or Let Die, I thought I'd never see him again! He literally has a hook for a hand, and wouldn't you know it, he's a P.I. now and working a case against the same diamond smugglers, the Spangled Mob (a name I'm sure the Brits thought made perfect sense for US gangsters). Leiter can't help meddle with the mob, and he un-fixes the fixed horse race, causing Bond not to get paid and needlessly endangering the life of the jockey, whom Bond then witnesses get nearly burned alive under hot mud at some kind of hot mud spa (no, for real, it's a thing). Actually that scene is the first with any real suspense. Fleming devotes a whole chapter to the ways Bond must first get naked at the spa, get covered in hot, heavy mud and then wrapped in heavy cloth until he's completely incapacitated as part of the spa treatment and you just know something bad's gonna happen while he's immobilized like that. Ian Fleming's formula begins to expose itself with this one. It's got some of the same qualities I loved about the previous three, but belies the reality that in fact every novel is starting to repeat. There's the larger than life villain at the top of any particular criminal organization; an innocent and irresistible woman who's career has her caught up in all the inevitable danger; his American pal Felix who will pop up here and there to discuss the exposition over expensive entrees; and of course lots and lots of gambling and fine dining. In this case the villain is the unknown ABC, who unlike previous villains, hardly ever appears and isn't very scary. The Spangled Mob is generic except for a pair of henchmen whose presumed homosexuality substitutes for any actual character building. Tiffany Case is predictably "the girl" from the moment we meet her and they just as predictably start to bat eyelashes at each other but for the life of me and I couldn't pick up on any reason why (and I'm still coming back to her, just wait for it...). Don't get me wrong, I like the formula, but I liked it more when I felt like it was just a pulpy coincidence that deconstructed my expectations as often as fulfilled them. In Casino Royale, he beat the bad guy half-way through and the rest was an exercise in suspenseful denouement building to that heartbreaking betrayal-suicide. Live and Let Die was a nonstop thrill ride of ever ratcheting stakes, with a brilliant villain only pretending to be pure evil. Moonraker has that great twist at the end when "the girl" turns out to be married. You begin to read each story suspiciously. Perhaps Fleming only wants me to think there's a formula so he can catch me off guard? Not this time. When Bond wants the money that he never got from the un-fixed horse race, they send him to Vegas to "win" it from a fixed Blackjack table instead. It happens to be Tiffany Case working the table. Her role within the organization starts to get a little fuzzy. They explain it somewhere but it just seems too convenient. Fleming goes on a whirlwind tour of Vegas, spending several chapters covering the flight with a connection in California, the strip, the history of Bugsy, the lights and glamour, as if the setting were the moon itself. In the fifties, I'll bet Vegas was a pretty exotic place still, and I'll give Fleming credit, he makes it feel like the moon. It's never been better romanticized. But to what end? Nothing happens. Even Bond gets bored as the page count starts to add up, and decides to break the rules. He was told to "win" the money he had coming and nothing else. No more gambling. Which is the same advice literally everyone else gave him, including an elaborate explanation of the extremely unbeatable Vegas odds. So what does he do? He puts it all on Red. Then Black. Then Red again, and quadruples his money just to piss off the mob and move the story along. They run him down on the road. He outsmarts them. They catch him anyway. They torture him. Tiffany rescues him. They outrun a train and blow it up and kill one of the big badguys I think, then run off back to England by cruise ship to heal up. I mean, it all just happens about as quickly as I wrote it. It's very unsatisfying. And then there's Tiffany Case, named after a case from Tiffany's. Fleming really botched it with this one. Moonraker's girl was so great! She saved Bond more than once, I believe, was way smarter, and more capable, and just shrugged him off at the end for her husband. I loved it! But not only does Tiffany here lack any real character development, she isn't very clear as a character in the first place. She sort of does whatever for the gang, but isn't very high up either, nor very loyal to them, yet totally trusted. Her personality amounts to this one detail: she was gang raped as a kid, so she's not into men. Ok... Upon learning this backstory Bond abruptly confesses he must have her. Ok... Because he (a stranger) faintly flirts with her, she decides to randomly betray the mob and save his life. Ok... On the cruise they have a few meals and talk marriage and honestly, it reads like these people need therapy, not romance. I swear sometimes that seems to be the exact point Fleming might be trying to make and he's just being subtle about it and I'm supposed to think it's weird. And then out of nowhere she begs him to do "everything you've ever done to a girl. Now. Quickly." Ok! Fleming's handling of sex and women are once again "problematic," and yet there is a layer of nuance that comes so close to justifying it all and then misses the mark entirely. On the one hand, Fleming is more conscious of the long term psychological consequences that gang rape would have on a woman than I would've ever expected for the fifties. It's harsh, but realistic. But only at first. Because on the other hand, He eventually reduces her to a cheap love interest and victory prize and then finally just a damsel in distress for Bond to rescue and then "earn". Even her sexual baggage can only be solved by Bond's heroic sexual pursuit, a blatant and kinda icky male fantasy that undermines any of the potential intelligent discussion of the long term psychological consequences of gang rape. Her issues with men are no more than an obstacle for Bond's pursuit. And Bond always wins. Tiffany is just an object in the story that does whatever the plot requires and inevitably falls for the hero as fast as possible. Likewise Fleming trips over race in America, almost as badly as he did in Live and Let Die, going so far as to observe thankfully that the Brits don't have the race "problem" in England "as bad" as we do in the US. To them it's all just amusing ambiance that makes the US that much more exotic to his English readers (American readers didn't get into this spy stuff until after the movies hit it big). He even goes so far as to tell a joke making fun of how sensitive people are about race here that sounds like it could be told in today's climate as well (but, ya know, only at your racist uncle's house): Leiter (the American) says, "You can't even ask for a jigger of rum anymore, you have to say jegro." Did ya get it? Because... I'm so sorry. It's barely comprehensible because the truth is, we really don't use the word jigger anymore (but I doubt it's due to race). What saves Diamonds Are Forever, though, are the little touches. The details of his every drink at every bar. The meals he orders, the way he takes a shower, what he wears and all the intricate luxuries he indulges during his mission. It's the mundane minutia and pedantic procedures of exactly how he's supposed to smuggle diamonds and infiltrate a crime ring and get paid by betting on fixed horse races that gives you a taste of playing spy. These parts may occasionally be the most rote form of exposition you'll ever read, but there's something addictive in this vicarious verisimilitude that I can't get enough of. Bonus, he finally orders his famous vodka martini using his signature line for the first time, "shaken, not stirred." The other high point in the novel is the second to last chapter. All the underwhelming plot developments and time-killing that pads the prose are almost vindicated in one expertly crafted climax aboard the Queen Elizabeth, in what Bond and Tiffany only think is their denouement. They think the mission is over. The story wrapped up. And that they're safe and sound while they recuperate and flirt and eat expensive dinners. But when Bond gets the wire warning of hired assassins aboard, they've already got the girl and he has to climb from one port hole to another to rescue her. Of course he succeeds! But it's all in the execution and Fleming writes it so well, paying off details from across the whole novel, that I start to think maybe he pulled one over on me again. Maybe it was all just a slow burn on purpose. Maybe it was all a contrast to make the ending seem more intense. Maybe he's trying to repeat his Casino Royale structure just with a less exciting first half. And I'll admit he comes close. They can't all be winners, and this is by no means a flat out dud... Conclusion: 3 out of 5 stars. Diamonds are Forever is middling at worst with glimmers of potential for improvement. I'm not sure if it took risks and failed or if it failed to take any risks. By book four Fleming and his James Bond character were big hits, and editors often go easy on popular writers because: why bother? Fleming almost completely fails to utilize his famous "Fleming Sweep" (in which he ends a chapter on a suspenseful hook to keep you turning the page) and he accidentally lets half the novel sneak by without any real threat of danger, until even Bond himself makes note of it. The villain and his diamond smuggling operation are well researched in terms of realism (Fleming went on to write a whole non-fiction book about diamond smuggling) but in story terms they are boring and underdeveloped, and make only brief appearances. The girl is generic and stereotypical in a way none of the previous installments were guilty of and it really puts a funny taste in your mouth when they hook up so gratuitously. But for all these grievances, the sheer fun of living Bond's globetrotting life, and having secret meetings over lobster with old spy friends, and gambling high stakes and winning after everyone told you the odds is just too good to call the entire novel a waste. The ending works even if the story is padded out a little, and I'd read it again if I ever took a long flight to Vegas. I wish I could go back and give him a couple pointers on this one, because I think a little tweaking could've really salvaged this and gave it a chance to shine as bright as its title. Don't Forget to Like and Retweet!
Other Bond Novels Casino Royale Live and Let Die Moonraker From Russia With Love Raymond Chandler Detective Novels The Big Sleep Farewell, My Lovely
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