Book Review: Live and Let Die By Ian Fleming

Posted on March 6, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(Minor Spoilers)

Having recovered from both the horrific torture he suffered in Casino Royale and the suicide of Vesper Lynd, British secret agent James Bond is ready to return to the field. His latest mission takes him to America, where his job is to investigate Mr. Big. Mr. Big is Harlem-based gangster who is suspected of helping to finance Russian operations through his criminal enterprises.

(Specifically, Mr. Big has been selling 17th Century gold coins that are believed to be a part of a legendary pirate treasure that was buried somewhere in Jamaica. Ian Fleming knew his pirate lore and devotes a good deal of the beginning of the book to discussing Sir Henry Morgan.)

In America, Bond partners up with his old friend Felix Leiter but he soon discovers that taking down Mr. Big is not as easy as he thought it would be. Using the fear of voodoo to control his minions, Mr. Big has agents all across America. As well, Mr. Big also has the services of Solitaire, a beautiful Creole fortune teller. The case takes Bond and Felix from New York to Florida to Jamaica. It also costs one of them a leg and an arm. In order to maintain some suspense, I will refrain from revealing who gets attacked by a shark.

Reading the original James Bond novels can be enjoyable but it can also lead to a good deal of culture shock. Because Bond is constantly changing in the movies and the role is regularly recast, we tend to forget just how long the character of James Bond has been around. In the movies, Bond is forever the same age and his villains and their plots continually change to reflect whatever’s going on in the world. In SPECTRE, Blofeld was even reinvented as a bored Christoph Waltz.

The books, however, are frozen in time. They all reflect the attitudes and concerns of the time period in which they were written. That can often make for a fascinating read but it can also leave modern readers cringing. Ian Fleming was a man of his time and he shared both the strengths and the weaknesses of his time and his class. That’s a polite way of saying that, in the Bond novels, Fleming tends to treat anyone who is not British, white, and male with, at best, a patronizingly condescending attitude. (At worst, Fleming treats them with outright disdain.) That’s especially obvious in Live and Let Die, in which Mr. Big and all of his henchmen are black.

Live and Let Die was first published in 1954. Interestingly enough, Fleming doesn’t come across as being as prejudiced as some of his contemporaries. For instance, even when the action moves the American south, the n-word never appears in the book. (Then again, neither do any redneck sheriffs.) I wouldn’t call Fleming a racial progressive but, at the same time, it’s obvious that he means it to be the highest compliment when Bond describes Mr. Big as being the “first great Negro criminal.” But then Fleming introduces us to two sympathetic black characters who do nothing but happily take orders from Bond and then he starts writing dialogue in phonetic dialect and you just find yourself cringing and saying, “Oh my God, Ian, stop it!”

Here’s what does work as far as Live and Let Die is concerned: Mr. Big is a great villain, far less of a wimp than Casino Royale‘s Le Chiffre. As well, James Bond is a far more active character in this book and less whiny than he was in Casino Royale. Bond once again gets tortured but he doesn’t threaten to quit the service just because his finger gets broken. Instead, he seeks revenge.

As an American, it was interesting for me to read Fleming’s thoughts on my home country. While Bond seems quite comfortable in New York, both he and Felix are absolutely miserable in Florida. In fact, Fleming portrays Florida as being Hell on Earth, hot and full of ill-tempered old people. It’s impossible not to be amused by just how viscerally Fleming disliked Florida.

Finally, Fleming’s skills as a storyteller were even stronger in Live and Let Die than in Casino Royale. I mean, whatever else you might say about the book, who can resist that perfect one line dismissal of a opponet: “He disagreed with something that ate him.”

Tomorrow, we take a look at Moonraker!

Book Review: Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

Posted on March 5, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(SPOILERS)

Earlier this year, I decided to reread all of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. On this site, I’ve written many times about how much I love all of the James Bond films so I thought it would be interesting, especially since a few years have passed since I originally read them, to reread the original novels.

The first Bond novel was Casino Royale. First published in 1953, Casino Royale introduced the world to not only MI6’s James Bond but also to the CIA’s Felix Leiter, the sinister assassins of SMERSH, and the tragic Vesper Lynd.

The story starts with a deceptively simple mission. James Bond has been sent to the Casino Royale, with specific orders to play against and humiliate Le Chiffre, a union boss who works for the Russians. Bond succeeds at his mission but quickly discovers that Le Chiffre is not the type to accept the loss of eighty million francs gracefully. Bond ends up undergoing a truly horrific torture, one that is described in harrowing details by Fleming. While it’s not a spoiler to reveal that Bond survives (after all, Casino Royale was followed by 11 novels and 2 short story collections), it comes at the cost of a terrible scar and a terrible tragedy.

In his first appearance, Bond already possesses several of the traits for which he’s best known. He’s a meticulous eater, a frequent drinker, and a chain smoker. He’s ruthless and is described as being cruelly handsome. When Vesper Lynd first meets him, she exclaims that he looks like Hoagy Carmichael, the British musician who Fleming originally hoped would play Bond in the films.

At the same time, while rereading Casino Royale, I was surprised by how passive Bond was for the majority of the book. Beyond the scene where he plays baccarat with Le Chiffre, Bond really doesn’t take a very active role in his first novel. When he’s captured and tortured, he doesn’t escape through his wits. In fact, he doesn’t escape at all. He’s rescued by SMERSH, who have decided that they no longer need Le Chiffre to launder money for them. After being rescued, he decides to retire from intelligence work and marry Vesper Lynd. Vesper Lynd is a double agent but Bond never figures that out on his own. He only discovers this fact from Vesper’s suicide note.

(Which, of course, leads to the novel famous and bitter final line: “The bitch is dead.”)

In fact, there are times when Bond almost seems to be … well, dorky. Early on, we’re informed that he hopes to create and make a fortune off of a new drink. (Minutes after meeting Vesper, he announces that he’s going to name the drink after her.) When he’s in the hospital recovering from being beaten, he’s hardly the Bond we all know and love. Instead, he’s rather petulant. When he explains that he’s quitting the service, he comes across like an angry teenager announcing that he’s not going to go to school anymore.

As for the novel itself, it’s a quick read and, even after all these years, I can see why it caused a stir when it was originally released. It’s not just that Fleming was telling a spy story that was full of intrigue and deceit. It’s also the Fleming was giving readers a glimpse into a glamorous world that they probably would never have a chance to experience for themselves. Fleming describes the casino with such care and attention to detail that you literally feel like you’re there, watching Bond gamble.

For the record, here’s my favorite line from the book. It occurs shortly after Bond first meets Felix Leiter and discovers that Felix is from my homestate:

“Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them seemed to come from Texas.”

And finally, here’s the ingredient for Bond’s drink, the Vesper:

“Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel.”

(Apparently, some of these ingredients are out-of-date. I rarely drink so I have no idea.)

Casino Royale was followed by Live and Let Die, which I’ll review tomorrow.

Book Review: The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor

Posted on March 4, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last Wednesday night, we got hit by a huge storm. Around 11:00, after a brilliant flash of lightning, we lost all power. (The power wouldn’t return for nearly 12 hours.) Since I didn’t want to go to sleep until the power came back on, I ended up sitting in the living room and reading, by the glow of the flashlight, C.J. Tudor’s The Chalk Man.

In the year 1986, in a small English village, five children stumbled across a mystery. Eddie, Fat Gav, Metal Mickey, Hoppo, and Nicky followed a series of chalk drawing into the woods and what they found changed both them and the town forever. Their discovery would not only reveal several carefully held secrets but would also lead to accusations and tragedy.

30 years later, Eddie still lives in the village and that discovery continues to haunt him. Actually, many things haunt Eddie. He has yet to recover from watching his father slowly die of Alzheimer’s. A compulsive thief as a child, he’s now grown up to be a hoarder. In his more reflective moments, he admits that he’s become an alcoholic. He’s still a friend to some of his classmates from 1986 but his closest relationship is with his border, the much younger Chloe. He fears that, as a teacher, he’s not reaching his students. When Eddie was younger, there was one teacher who reached him, a teacher who was linked to that discovery in the woods.

And then, one night, an old acquaintance shows up on Eddie’s doorstep, bringing with him a business proposal. And soon, Eddie is once again trying to solve the mysteries of 1986. Everyone still has their secrets. No one can claim to be totally innocent. Not even Eddie.

The debut novel of C.J. Tudor, The Chalk Man alternates between scenes set in 1986 and scenes set in 2016. Though the structure may bring to mind Stranger Things or Stephen King’s It, The Chalk Man quickly establishes its own identity. It’s an intriguing book, one that uses its central mystery to explore themes of aging, loss, memory, and prejudice. While the book has a few flaws that are common to most first novels, it’s still an enjoyable and compulsive read and I look forward to reading what C.J. Tudor comes up with next.

Incidentally, I also look forward to inevitable film version of The Chalk Man. As long as Ewan McGregor plays the grown-up Eddie, I’ll be happy…

Guilty Pleasure No. 35: Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

Posted on March 4, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Way back in January, I took the time to read the 1966 novel, Valley of the Dolls. While I had already seen the film that this work inspired, this was my first time to read the actual book.

Before I even opened to the front page, I knew that Valley of the Dolls had been a best-seller, that it inspired a countless number of imitations, and that it had a reputation for being really, really bad. As soon as I started to read the first chapter, I discovered that the book’s reputation was well-earned. To call author Jacqueline Susann’s prose clunky was a bit of an insult to clunky prose everywhere.

Opening in 1945 and covering 24 years in cultural, sexual, and drug history, Valley of the Dolls starts with Anne Welles leaving her boring home in New England and relocating to New York, where she promptly gets a job at a theatrical agency. Everyone tells Anne that she’s beautiful and should be trying to become a star but Anne says that she’s not interested in that. (You’ll be thoroughly sick of Anne’s modesty before reaching the tenth page.) Everyone says that Anne is incredibly intelligent, even though she never really does anything intelligent. Everyone says that she’s witty, even though she never says anything that’s particularly funny. In short, Anne Welles is perhaps the most annoying literary character of all time. Anne spends about 20 years waiting for her chance to marry aspiring author Lyon Burke. When she does, Lyon turns out to be a heel and drives Anne to start taking drugs. I assume it’s meant to be somewhat tragic but who knows? Maybe all of the pills (or “the dolls” as the characters in the book call them) will give Anne a personality.

They certainly worl wonders for everyone else in the book. Neely O’Hara is constantly taking pills and she’s the best character in the book. Unlike Anne, she’s never modest. She’s never quiet. She’s actually funny. Even more importantly, she doesn’t spend the whole book obsessing over one man. Instead, she’s always either throwing a tantrum or having an affair or abandoning her children or getting sent to a mental institution. Neely’s a lot of fun. Unfortunately, we don’t really get to see much of Neely until after having to slog through a hundred or so pages of Anne being boring.

The other major character is Jennifer North, a starlet who was apparently based on Marilyn Monroe. The parts of the book dealing with Jennifer are actually about as close as Valley of the Dolls actually gets to being, for lack of a better term, good. In fact, if the book just dealt with Jennifer’s tragice story, it would probably be remembered as a minor classic. Instead, Jennifer is often overshadowed by Neely (which is understandable since Neely’s insane and therefore capable of saying anything) and Anne (who, as I mentioned before, is the most annoying literary characters of all time).

Why is Valley of the Dolls a guilty pleasure? A lot of it is because of all of the sexual melodrama and pill-popping, the descriptions of which are often so overwritten that they’re unintentionally hilarious. Most of it is because Neely O’Hara goes crazy with so much overwrought style. Whenever the book focuses on Neely, Susann’s inartful prose is replaced with a stream-of-consciousness tour of Neely’s paranoid and petty mind. Interestingly enough, some of the most infamous scenes from the movie are also present in the novel. Remember that scene where Neely rips off Helen Lawson’s wig and then flushes it down a toilet? That’s actually in the book!

Anyway, it’s an incredibly silly but compulsively readable book … or, at least, it is if you can make it through all the boring stuff with Anne at the beginning. Then again, as annoying as Anne is, she doesn’t exactly get a happy ending. Perhaps that’s why Valley of the Dolls is such a guilty pleasure.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Book Review: Need To Know by Karen Cleveland

Posted on February 17, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

How well do you know the people you love?

That’s the question that’s at the heart of Need to Know, the debut novel of Karen Cleveland.

When we first Vivian Miller, the main character and narrator of Need to Know, she has a life that, on the surface, many would envy. She has four children, a nice house in the suburbs of D.C., and a handsome and charming husband named Matt. Of course, there are problems. Money’s tight. One of her children has a heart defect, one that will undoubtedly require surgery in the future. Honestly, Vivian would be happy to stay home and spend all of her time taking care of the children but, as Matt always reminds her, they need the money that her job brings in.

Vivian works for the CIA. She’s an analyst and, as glamorous as working in intelligence might sound, her job basically involves spending a lot of time in the office, searching through the computers of suspected Russian agents. For instance, there’s the mysterious Yury. When Vivian searches through Yury’s files, she comes across a folder that is labeled “Friends.” Inside the folder are five pictures of five people who might or might not be working for the Russians.

Four of the pictures are of total strangers.

The fifth picture is of Matt.

If nothing else, Need to Know is a book that will keep you guessing. Is Matt a Russian agent or was his picture placed in the folder just to compromise Vivian’s position with the CIA? Has Matt spent ten years being a perfect and supportive husband or was he actually a passive aggressive manipulator? What do the Russians want and how far are they willing to go to get it? And, even more importantly, how far is Vivian willing to go to protect her children?

Need to Know is a strong debut novel, a perfectly paced thriller that will take consistently take you by surprise. Karen Cleveland is a former CIA analyst herself and she puts that background to good use in Need to Know, supplying a lot of interesting details that you wouldn’t get from a book written by … well, by someone like me, whose national security expertise is pretty much limited to what I’ve seen in the movies.

(Speaking of movies, apparently Charlize Theron will be producing and starring in the film version of Need to Know. Personally, the entire time I was reading the novel, I pictured Naomi Watts as Vivian, Jeremy Renner as Matt, and Richard Jenkins as Vivian’s boss, Peter.)

I did have a few issues with the final few chapters of the book. Though it didn’t effect my overall enjoyment of the novel, I would have liked a stronger ending. That said, the ending does potentially leave room for a sequel and I will definitely be reading the next book that Karen Cleveland writes!

If you’re in the mood for a good and intelligent spy thriller, Need to Know is definitely one to check out.

2017 In Review: Lisa Marie’s Ten Favorite Non-Fiction Books of 2017

Posted on January 15, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

A word about Paperbacks From Hell, my favorite nonfiction book of 2017. One of my goals for 2018 (and probably 2019, as well) is to read every single book mentioned in Paberbacks From Hell. I’ve been told that it won’t be easy because several of the books are apparently no longer in print. But that’s okay. I’m looking forward to searching for them almost as much as I’m looking forward to reading them!

On Wednesday, I’ll be listing my picks for the best of Lifetime and then, on Friday, I’ll finally wrap up my look back at 2017 with my picks for the best 26 movies of the year!

Previous entries in the TSL’s Look Back at 2017:

2017 In Review: Lisa Marie’s 12 Favorite Novels of 2017!

Posted on January 13, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I wish I had read more in 2017. I really dropped the ball last year but I’m going to make up for it this year!

With all that in mind, here are my 12 favorite novels of 2017!

My look back at 2017 will conclude next week. On Monday, I’ll post my picks for the best non-fiction books of 2017. On Wednesday, I’ll post my picks for the best of 2017 Lifetime. And then, on Friday, my picks for the best 26 films of 2017!

(My apologies for dragging things out but I do need the extra time so I can catch up on a few films that I missed in 2017.)

Previous entries in the TSL’s Look Back at 2017:

Book Review: WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE CASABLANCA by Noah Isenberg (W.W. Norton 2017)

Posted on November 25, 2017 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

CASABLANCA was released seventy-five years ago today, and The Cult of Casablanca is stronger than ever! The film resonates with young and old alike in its themes of lost love, redemption, and answering to a higher moral authority. Noah Isenberg’s latest book, WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE CASABLANCA: THE LIFE, LEGEND, AND AFTERLIFE OF HOLLYWOOD’S MOST BELOVED MOVIE, takes a look behind the Silver Screen to track the history of the film from its beginnings through its continuing popularity today.

Isenberg, a professor of film studies at The New School and author of the definitive EDGAR G. ULMER: A FILMMAKER AT THE MARGINS (2014), gives the reader a three-pronged look at the film. In the first, he meticulously delineates the screenplay’s roots, from its birth as the play Everybody Comes to Rick’s by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, to the adaptation by brothers Julius and Philip Epstein, to the contributions of writers…

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Horror Book Review: Jamie Lee Curtis: Scream Queen by David Grove

Posted on October 31, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I cannot let this Halloween end without recommending Jamie Lee Curtis: Scream Queen, David Grove’s biography of one of horror cinema’s most iconic stars.

As you can probably guess from the title, the focus of this book is on the start of Jamie Lee Curtis’s career, when she was almost exclusively appearing in slasher films. Beginning with her starring role in Halloween and going all the way through films like Terror Train, Prom Night, Road Games, The Fog, and Halloween 2, the book shows both how Curtis dealt with suddenly being a horror icon and how she eventually left the horror genre behind in an effort to show that she was capable of doing more than just screaming and running. Eventually, as the book details, she reached a point where she could return to horror with Halloween H20 but, for a while, her horror work was truly a double-edged sword. It made her famous but it also kept her from being considered for the type of roles that she truly hoped to play.

That said, this book takes refreshingly positive look at her early film career, providing both serious analysis of and fascinating behind-the-scenes details about all of Curtis’s horror films. Yes, even Prom Night.

In fact, the two chapters devoted to Prom Night were probably my favorite part of the book. Though Curtis herself was not interviewed, several members of the cast and crew were and their recollections of their work on this not-very-good but oddly watchable film provide an interesting portrait of life during a low-budget movie shoot. Of course, everyone focuses on how in awe they were of Jamie but, at the same time, they are also open about their own personal feelings and recollections about the shooting of this movie. Their hopes and dreams, many of them destined to be unfulfilled, come through just as vividly as their memories of watching Jamie Lee Curtis film the famous disco scene. The passages dealing with Casey Stevens, who played Jamie’s Prom Night boyfriend and subsequently died of AIDS, are especially moving. In the end, Jamie Lee Curits; Scream Queen is not just a biography of Jamie Lee Curtis. It’s a tribute to both movies and the people who make them.

If you’re a lover of the horror genre or a student of film history, this is one of those book that you simply must have. It’s got just about everything that you could possibly want.

Horror Book Review: Ed Wood: Nightmare of Ecstasy (The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr.) by Rudolph Grey

Posted on October 29, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Beware all who open this book!

Nightmare of Ecstasy is an oral history of the life of Ed Wood, Jr., the man who has unfairly been declared the worst director of all time. Not only does it include interviews with people who knew and worked with Wood at all the stages of his life and career but it also includes plenty of details about what went on behind the scenes during the making of Wood’s most famous films.

And, make no mistake, a lot of it is fascinating and hilarious. Wood truly did surround himself with a collection of eccentrics and, fortunately for this book, several of them were very verbose eccentrics. (Sadly, since this was book was originally published way back in 1992, some of the most notable interviews are with people who have since passed away.) Wood was a storyteller so it’s perhaps not surprising that he was drawn to other storytellers.

Nightmare of Ecstasy is credited as being the basis for Tim Burton’s film, Ed Wood and it serves as a nice companion piece. Since Ed Wood was highly fictionalized, Nightmare of Ecstasy is a good resource for setting the record straight. Some of the more memorable moments in Ed Wood come across as being rather mundane in the book. Meanwhile, some of the book’s more flamboyant passages did not make it into the film. For instance, only by reading the book can you discover that one of Ed Wood’s frequent actors, Kenne Duncan, was nicknamed Horsecock.

At the same time, it’s a sad book because it follows Wood all the way to his final days. Wood is such a legendary figure that I think it’s sometimes forgotten that he was also a human being. Reading the book, you admire Wood for never giving up but, at the same time, you discover that he wasn’t the eternal optimist that Johnny Depp played in Burton’s film. At the end of his life, he was a rather sad man, an alcoholic who sometimes pawned his typewriter so he’d have enough money to buy a drink. He was reduced to working on the fringes of the adult film industry, even trying to convince his Plan 9 From Outer Space co-star, Vampiram to appear in a hardcore film. At one point, Dudley Manlove (who played Eros in Plan 9) quotes a drunk and angry Wood as using a racial slur to describe his neighbors and it’s a shock because that’s just not the way that most of us like to think about Ed Wood.

Though the book may ultimately be rather sad, it’s also a valuable resource. At the end of the book is a list of all of the films and TV shows that Wood is believed to have worked on. (Wood has more credits than you might expect, though sadly some of them appear to be lost.) Even more importantly, there is a list of every “adult” novel that Wood wrote, along with a plot description and even a few excerpts. Longtime fans will be happy to learn that, just as in his films, Ed Wood the novelist always took the time to mention angora.