#book!bond

[milkwithginseng]

2022 is not only the first time I’m participating in 007 Fest but the year I finally decided to read all of the original Ian Fleming books and I have to say for the most part I’m really enjoying reading them, a new one for every month of this year (I started on Thunderball yesterday). 

So here is my interpretation of literary James Bond 007 sketched in Procreate on an iPad.

[milkwithginseng]

Young Bond: Shoot to Kill by Steve Cole Review

For a challenge this year I decided to read a new Ian Fleming James Bond book, and a non-Fleming Bond book every month. Last month’s non-Fleming offering was Shoot to Kill which I thought I’d write a review of:

Despite growing up with the Young Bond series penned by Charlie Higson I had aged out of it by the time this book came around in 2014. I can’t recall when I found out that there was a second Young Bond series so this time I’m going without any knowledge and crucially without any sentimental attachment to them.

Anecdotally I’ve never seen any of the Cole books in the wild which doesn’t augur well, except at the mecca of books, the Foyles Bookshop at Charing Cross Road, which is where I picked up my paperback copy of Shoot to Kill. 

I was both fascinated and trepidatious about Cole’s Young Bond series because on the one hand, I was really interested to see how he continued what Higson started and how he wrote James during his time at Fettes. I enjoyed his first Doctor Who novel, The Feast of the Drowned, but apart from that I’ve not been too enthused with his work, I get the impression he’s a very workmanlike author which is not necessarily a bad thing but he not only has to live up to Fleming but also Higson in my book. 

On the whole, I think Cole does achieve the impossible, Shoot to Kill is a competently written continuation of Higson’s series with marvellous action in an inspired setting, Hollywood in the Golden Age of Film is such a great fit for James Bond. Doubly so for this prequel series which carries on the rumination on James’ future. In a meta sense, the silver screen is where James Bond eventually ends up.

Cole to his further credit confounded my expectations from the very first page, I had assumed that we’d get straight to Fettes but James has to spend a few weeks at Dartington Hall, an experimental new school in Totnes before he makes his way north of the border. 

It’s an effective rug pull for the seasoned Bond readers and allows Cole to play in the gaps in James Bond’s timeline while also carving out something new and revealing something about the transitory nature of James’ life. 

But knowing from the start that we’ll likely never see these characters again does hamper the ability to fully embrace them. They do grow on you, there is an endearing quality about them and I like that there is more of an ensemble feel to this adventure. Hugo Grande is easily the most likeable of the newly-introduced characters, and a better representation of a person with dwarfism than No Time to Die. However, I don’t think they are quite as distinctive as they could be.

It would’ve been hard for anyone to top the previous Bond girl Roan Power but Bouddica “Boody” Pryce does feel like a downgrade. Some attempt is made to flesh her out, with her engineering streak that gives Bond an iconic weapon but she fills the typically prickly girl that Bond has to deal with that fails to mark her out as something more. 

Where Shoot to Kill falls down in the plotting. James along with his classmates happening to fall upon a snuff film is intriguing but unlike SilverFin where there is a gradual ramping up of stakes as the story goes on Shoot to Kill has a decently solid, if a little slow opening but then it completely sags in the middle only for it to do a full 180 and go full throttle in the final third. It’s only in that final third where the villain of the piece I felt truly became worthy of Fleming.

What Cole lacks is what Raymond Benson coined as ‘the Fleming sweep’ the little hooks at the end of a chapter that urge you to read the next and on and on. Something that Higson was similarly able to master. 

It also relies a little too much on coincidence, there’s an awful lot of James happening to overhear things at just the right time. However, the one occasion where it does work is the one time he gets caught eavesdropping by a newspaper reporter of Asian heritage which is a nice subversion of Dr No.

To first get to America James has to board a Zeppelin. I love how the book takes advantage of a phenomenon that wouldn’t be possible if the story was set even only a couple of years later in the decade. 

The Young Bond series has never been glamorous in the way that Fleming’s novels often are so it’s welcome that this series finally indulges in the splendour of the USA. And this is in a sense the first time James canonically has his first taste of luxury and the book captures the childlike naivety of the wonder of America that I certainly had at that age, that it was like Britain but bigger and more ostentatious.

And the glamour is effectively juxtaposed with the sleaze, something that I think Shoot to Kill does better than Diamonds Are Forever, which the former is clearly inspired by, the penultimate showdown having definite ‘Spectreville’ vibes.

It’s a similar story with the goriness which if anything is something more prominent in Higson’s stories than Fleming’s. Rather than shying away from it the goriness is still here with the villain getting a fittingly gruesome death but on more than one occasion the gore is simply described prosaically as “gory”, Cole’s writing again lacks the sharpness that Fleming and Higson employed. 

It took me a little while to acclimatise to how Cole writes James as opposed to Higson, it’s only when James gets a charmingly cheeky, toying with his friend did I realise that Cole is writing him with Roger Moore in mind. Which makes a lot of sense, Higson very much a child of Connery and Cole being a couple of decades younger must’ve grown up with Moore. 

There are some more cute references, James walking past a concert hall playing a ‘distinctive and jazzy’ number ‘with a mid-tempo beat, brasses and strings and needling steel guitars’ and an ominous swagger’ nod to the iconic Bond theme while still being quite subtle. Then there’s the obligatory Hoagy Carmichael reference that actually factors into the plot later on which I think works less well. Then come the final page we get something of a sequel hook concerning Andrew Bond and if this is going where this is going then I’m not looking forward, to put it mildly. 

Overall, Shoot to Kill is a mostly competent debut for Cole’s series, filled with decent action but one that lacks the finesse of its predecessors that ultimately left me feeling a little lukewarm.