Should I eat my words?
Wouldn’t you know it? I was gifted a copy of Jeffery Deaver’s Carte Blanche, his new 007 thriller. Put a book in my hands and I start turning pages. In this case, they were real pages, although I understand that the book is also doing well as an eBook. I was curious, I’ll admit. What could Mr. Deaver do with Bond that hasn’t been done before?
Pre-existing biases and genre prejudices shouldn’t count in the reviewer’s world even though, in my case, I’m also a writer with my own way of doing things (which continuously evolves, but that’s another story)—the title of Jane Friedman’s well known blog, There Are No Rules, is really a corollary to the writer’s commandment “Know what the rules are.” Yet a writer’s style goes beyond rules and is as personal as his fingerprints. I generally like Deaver’s, but, as I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, I didn’t want to have anything to do with James Bond.
Should I eat my words? Curiosity, you see, trumped boredom with the character. Next to the bottom line: Deaver’s Bond book is an entertaining thriller. I confess—I enjoyed it and it held my attention. However, you won’t find either Le Carre here or even Fleming. It stands alone as a new look at James Bond, just like the movie Casino Royale (the second one starring Daniel Craig). The bottom line: Deaver’s Bond is not your father’s Bond. Very little tongue-in-cheek (I missed that), not many sexy Bond conquests, and a bad guy that redefines perversion by getting his jollies viewing and sniffing dead bodies up close.
Moreover, you could change Bond’s name to Luke Skywalker and it would make little difference. In Carte Blanche, he’s just an intelligent guy that can kill people outside the UK and is not allowed to even carry a gun inside. (The carte blanche stems from the fact that he can make decisions on his own outside the UK, not just have a license to kill—apparently the new 00’s are more trustworthy for M and his crowd?) Percy, Bond’s competitor from Div 3 of MI5, is more interesting (Deaver supplies a glossary for the alphabet soup of agencies—you might need it).
Percy, in fact, proves a point: Deaver mostly fails (because he’s bored with them?) when writing about the standard Bond characters, even Bond, but excels when creating new ones. Another example in addition to Percy: Naill, the Irish ex-terrorist and errand boy for the necrophiliac villain. Naill is an excellent rendering of a sociopathic monster—a man who cannot understand his boss’ perversion because he doesn’t seem to have any emotions. A third example: Bheka Jordaan, a tough South African cop who gives 007 a rough time. I love them all.
Deaver excels where Deaver has always excelled—his plot is complex and twisty, although he bends venues and characters in order to squeeze in all the usual Bond features, including the famous martini described in excruciating detail. There’s even a new drink thrown in. More drinking and dining are also featured. (You can skip over the details. They’re boring. Take your significant other out to a good restaurant instead.) Maybe the bending was required by the Fleming estate trustees, who knows?
The plot is set in our current time. This new Bond is just over thirty. He’s snapped in and out of situations that relate to current events. In fact, the plot tapestry Deaver weaves takes me back to Garden of Beasts and the best of the Lincoln Rhyme novels, with the addition of a tour de force where the protagonist also jumps geographically. This can leave you breathless and confused at times, especially when a jump often occurs just after bad stuff happens (Felix Leiter’s man buying the farm in a well packaged fashion, for example—yes, Felix also makes a brief appearance and has become young again).
Bond is still the brash MI6 loose cannon that drives M mad, but he seems less suave and less violent. He is truly a civilized Bond, where Fleming’s character was just a violent Neanderthal trying to be Barbie’s Ken. Sean Connery portrayed the old Bond well. Perhaps Daniel Craig is the right man for Deaver’s new Bond—a little less large than life, a little more human. Some might be interested in how Deaver’s Bond tries to figure out whether his father was a spy and for whom. I found it distracting, even though I guess it’s part of my perception that this Bond is from a parallel universe to Fleming’s—maybe he jumped through some branes to find ours in order to bother reviewers like me?
The villain, our necrophiliac refuse and garbage recycler, is not quite in the league of Auric Goldfinger. His crimes are more modern and not up to the level of radiating all the gold bullion of Fort Knox. Since we no longer have the gold standard, Goldfinger’s crime is also passé. (Maybe that’s why Mr. Ron Paul wants to bring back that standard—is he really Goldfinger?) The villain’s name Severan Hydt reminds me of Harry Potter’s nemesis, which didn’t help. And maybe someone can explain to me why Deaver gave him extra long fingernails—another reference to the warlocks in Harry Potter or even he-whom-you-cannot-name?
Part of the twist in this novel is a plethora of villains and their associated targets. The lesson is that this 21st century world is a more complicated place now—simple schemes like Goldfinger’s just don’t cut it, although desire for power is out of the equation with only greed remaining. The real villain, Niall, the engineering madman, is also more complex. He turns out to actually have some emotions too. Sure, he kills without remorse, more so than Mr. Necrophiliac, but he plays an important and complex role throughout the book. Whereas the interesting Percy is not developed well enough, Niall is, and his true nature comes out only at the end.
Bond’s women? There’s Philly, Felicity, and Bheka, and they all end up frustrating Bond. However, this Bond is resigned to his frustration—again, not the Bond you’re used to. In fact, it almost seems out of character for Deaver’s Bond to have a one-night stand, so, when it happens, I immediately became suspicious. Since Deaver’s women are smart and are not fooled by 007’s charming veneer, they seem to peg Mr. Bond as a cad right from the start. Thus, I’m thinking that the one he has a fling with has an agenda and I wonder what it is. In fact, I took some guesses and was not far from target.
I leafed through some of the novels that continued Fleming’s series when they came out. Most stayed true to form and were therefore boring as hell. Deaver’s portrayal breaks the mold and could be a resounding success. I’m not making any predictions, but I’ll repeat the question of my previous post: why, Jeffery? Why did you want to join the other writers that tried to continue with Bond’s saga? What was the need?
Sure, Deaver admires Fleming. I admire Fleming. For one thing, Fleming introduced me to dry British humor, that national ability of Brits to quietly laugh at themselves. (It took Irishmen like Wilde and Shaw to teach them that.) He also introduced me to the cloak and dagger world of the spy novel, which has very little to do with reality (Le Carre is better for that) but a lot to do with the evil of human beings and what possibly could be done to thwart it. You’ll find no dry British humor in Deaver’s book, though. And you’ll also possibly miss connections with reality, even though the background events are surprisingly current (independence for southern Sudan, for example). But, as with Fleming, should you care?
Is Deaver’s authorship of a Bond book more than hero worship for Fleming? Maybe not. He puts the British author’s books ahead of his at the lists in the beginning and dedicates his book to Ian. In his acceptance speech for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award, received for Garden of Beasts, he spoke of his lifelong admiration of Fleming. Still, I don’t see it. Jeffery, you’re an established author with one hell of a platform, as they say in the trade. Why try to put your stamp on something as iffy as another tale about the MI6 superman? It’s not quite the riddle that “Who is Boston Teran?” is, but it comes close. If I ever meet you, Jeffery, I’m going to lay it on the line and ask you. I just can’t figure you out.
