Most helpful customer reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Yeah, baby!, Jun 2 2004
Again, Fleming delivers. Good, clean fun from the Cold War 50s. If you can get past Fleming's assumptions that all blacks in America are somehow interconnected by a mysterious communications web, and Fleming's comfort in using the "N"- word, then you'll enjoy this second installment in the Bond series. There's far more action than the first in the series, Casino Royale, what with Bond battling sharks and barracudas and whatnot. A hair-raisingly scary episode takes place as Bond makes his way underwater to the golden lair of Mr. Big, but rest assured, dear reader, that our Mr. Bond makes it through to the end of the book, safe and alive, albeit without a chunk of shoulder muscle, but that's neither here nor there. And wassup with Felix Leiter? Does he have all his body parts or not? Fleming kind of dropped the ball, so to speak, with letting us know whether or not Leiter was to survive for another adventure.
The Fleming series is undoubtedly addictive... Hardy Boys for the adults. On to "Moonraker" for me, baby.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Mr. Big --- the first of the great Bond villains, May 13 2004
Let me get this out of the way first -- if you can be easily offended by racial slurs, this is not the book for you. One must recall this was written in the mid 50s when racial insensitivity was unfortunately still quite prominent. Still, if you can put all that aside, you will find an enjoyable adventure story.
Mr. Big is the first of 007's "super-villains" and deservedly so -- he is portrayed as a criminal intellect that would warm even the heart of Hannibal Lechter. Bond, as in the prior novel, "Casino Royale" is portrayed as a human being and not the Connery/Moore/Brosnan superman most know from the movies, though if you watch carefully, you will spot a couple of death traps that were used in two of the films: Felix Leiter's fate as portrayed in "Licence to Kill" is directly from the "off-camera" action of this book; and the climactic attempt to feed Bond and Solitare to the sharks was directly adapted in the film version of "For Your Eyes Only."
The story itself involves 007 globetrotting from New York to Florida to the Caribbean in an attempt to destroy the crime syndicate of Mr. Big, a believed SMERSH opperative. Along the way he ends up a little the worse for wear (broken finger; mangled shoulder) but he still manages to get the girl, the nubile Solitare; and encounter the first of his many deathtraps. And as a Florida resident, I've been to some of the places Fleming generalized about and was amused by some of the things he said.
For those who have seen the film of the same name, there are similar nuances (Whisper and Tee-hee make brief appearances), but the book is very different from the movie. Again, some may find some of the content abraisive, to say the least, but if that can be overcome, the story is enjoyable.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
The first of the great evil Bond characters, but, Dec 10 2003
I plan to read the stories in sequence, which is a good thing otherwise I would have later wondered about the character of Felix Leiter when he appears in upcoming stories. As a believer that Sean Connery is the only true Bond, I also believe that Ian Fleming is the only true Bond author. However, this book is the first to expose some of Fleming's less desired qualities. He was a strong racist, and he gives this character flaw to James Bond. It was not as much the use of the N_____ word, but the author's philosophizing about the black person's place in society. And heaven forbid if the female of Bond's desire for this book were actually a full blooded black. If this were a different book, I probably would not have continued especially after the chapter titled, N____ Heaven. However, I saw this book much as a did when I read Gone With the Wind. It's an excellent book for its genre, mixed with the author's ignorance of sociological/historical issues. It's like when I attend a prize fight. I know that it's wrong, but darn I like it. That said, the story line is fast paced, and I enjoyed reading about the character's observations of the U.S. Atlantic coast region from the 1950's perspective. There is a lot of death and Bond and his friends do not escape from much of this brutality. What is particularly appealing is the development of Bond's first great evil antagonist, Mr. Big. The story gives the reader better insight into Bond's abilities and vulnerabilities. This is what I like from the books that are not much noticed in the movies. Overall, a good read, but with a lower rating from me due to the racism.
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