When people imitate hardboiled fiction, they’re imitating Mickey Spillane. Every sentence is boiling over with hate and disgust. Every thought is of violence.
Category Archives: Read
Kim
Kim is the sort of hardboiled detective story that the pulp paperback industry could produce in its sleep, peppered with enough fist-fights, shoot-outs, and sex to keep the slim volume well-packed.
Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi
Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi is the first in a series of Indiana Jones novels, published after the movies and relaying the adventures of Indy as a young man during the 1920s.
Sex and Naps
On the surface, The Wicker Man is the story of one police constable’s attempt to scrooge up a town’s May Day revelries. Delving deeper into its waters, however, is aided by a few key texts that informed the film.
High Spy: The Espionage Fiction of Adam Diment
In the midst of Swingin’ London, and in stark contrast to James Bond, English author Adam Diment created Philip McAlpine, a reluctant, shaggy-haired, dope-smoking spy in the latest Carnaby Street fashions.
James Bond vs. the ’80s
We are increasingly left with a sort of bland guy who just happens to be named James Bond — which, in a way, might be bringing the character back around to how Fleming originally imagined him, as an anonymous blunt instrument into whom a reader could pour his or her own identity; a characterless cypher of a man who might not be interesting but to whom interesting things happened. But honestly, by the middle of the 1980s, with decades of suave, awesome James Bond under our belts, did anyone really want an anonymous 007?
Touchfeather
Jimmy Sangster is known to most as the writer of a brace of seminal Hammer gothic horror films. From his pen came the scripts for The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula/Horror of Dracula (plus their immediate sequels) and The Mummy, not to mention the likes of Jack the Ripper and Blood of the Vampire for rivalContinue reading “Touchfeather”
Man with the Golden Gun
Oh yeah, I forgot that I never finished reviewing all the Bond books by Ian Fleming. In a way, that in itself is a fitting review of the final of Fleming’s influential adventures starring international pop culture icon James Bond. There is nothing about The Man with the Golden Gun that I would call bad.Continue reading “Man with the Golden Gun”
You Only Live Twice
After the critical and popular misfire of The Spy Who Loved Me — A literary experiment that was noble in intention but fell apart in execution — the pressure was on Ian Fleming to deliver a top notch Bond adventure to make up for things. At the same time, it’s obvious that Fleming was beyondContinue reading “You Only Live Twice”
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
A well-written Bond and Tracey are key components of the success of this novel, but it wouldn’t have gone anywhere without an equally strong villain. Fleming had been floundering for a decent villain for a while, relying largely on a cast of increasingly outrageous comic book villains until he struck gold with Emilio Largo, a villain with a believable yet still larger-than-life personality that made him every bit the match for Bond.
The Spy Who Loved Me
I hope whatever good will was generated for you (provided you liked the book as much as I did) by Thunderball is still fresh in your memory, because you’re going to need to lean heavily upon it if you ever want to make it to the end of Fleming’s next Bond novel, The Spy WhoContinue reading “The Spy Who Loved Me”
Thunderball
OK, now this is more like it. After muddling through a series of unsatisfying short stories — some of which were frustrating because they contained the unrealized kernel of a great story, others because they had next to nothing to do with James Bond — Ian Fleming returns to familiar territory with one of myContinue reading “Thunderball”
