Mike the Giant Killer

Times are sure a-changing. And nowhere is that more obvious than in Mike Hammer’s New York. The city has not forgotten that fateful September 11^th of 2001. The Communists are of course gone. Organized crime is no longer the main threat. No, what people really fear is a repeat of those terror attacks. All it might take is a single spark to set the powder keg off. That spark might just come from an unlikely source, from a Biblical giant who’s been dead for thousands of years.

Everyone knows the story of David and Goliath, of course… and when two post-graduate students uncover a massive human thigh bone in the Valley of Elah, the circumstantial evidence seems to point towards Goliath as the bone’s original owner. A crisis ensues. Islamic terrorist groups begin to target the students and their loved ones, trying to get the bone of a fallen hero. The Mossad is also expressing its concerns – after all, for Jews around the world, the bone of Goliath would represent a victory over a seemingly-unconquerable opponent. And Mike Hammer is damn interested, because he just saved the kids from getting shot in a subway terminal by shooting the gun out of their assailant’s hand…

007 Reloaded: On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Beautiful women show up everywhere in the James Bond series. But when Bond meets Tracy di Vicenzo, he feels something very different for her. She isn’t just another prize to be won and bedded. At the start of the novel, Bond prevents her from potentially committing suicide… and just as suddenly, the two find themselves kidnapped. Bond takes this time to reflect on the past few days, his initial encounter with Tracy, etc., and when the kidnapper finally reveals himself, it turns out to be Tracy’s father, Marc-Ange… the head of the Union Corse.

Marc-Ange thanks Bond for helping Tracy, and Bond gets a flash of inspiration. The two men form an unlikely alliance to hunt down Ernst Stavro Blofeld. (If you need a refresher on Blofeld and what he was up to last time, see my review of Thunderball.) Marc-Ange shares Bond’s hatred of Blofeld, who has bribed several of his men away from the Union Corse. Before long, Bond is back in London and is summoned to the College of Arms. He finds out that Blofeld has been in touch with the College, eager to engage them on a research project. It seems Blofeld is very eager to establish himself as the rightful heir to the de Bleuville title. Perhaps he wants to acquire a veneer of respectability like some of the previous Bond villains. Perhaps he’s simply lusting after a title. Either way, Blofeld has revealed himself and it’s up to Bond to play the cards right. So the plot is hatched: Bond will impersonate a Scottish nobleman and gain access to Blofeld’s stronghold, on the pretext of needing a personal interview to establish certain details. And thus Bond is plunged into an unforgettable adventure, though it’s probably all in a day’s work when you’re On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

007 Reloaded: The Spy Who Loved Me

Vivienne Michel is your typical French-Canadian-girl-who-was-orphaned-and-therefore-sent-to-England-to-become-a-lady-but-ended-up-losing-her-virginity-and-worked-in-a-newspaper-office-where-she-had-another-love-affair-before-that-ended-in-an-abortion-and-so-she-returned-to-Canada-and-decided-to-go-on-a-road-trip-via-her-Vespa-which-she-bought-in-England-all-the-way-to-Florida. There, I just saved you from reading Part I of this book. By 'this book', I mean Ian Fleming’s The Spy Who Loved Me, and it’s supposed to be a James Bond adventure. So where is Bond? Who is Vivienne? And who are the nasty characters who are holding her hostage at the Dreamy Pines Motor Court, a motel in the Adirondacks?

The Spy Who Loved Me is a bit of an interruption in the “Blofeld trilogy” of novels where Bond chases after Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his organisation SPECTRE. Blofeld never appears in this novel, but reference is made to SPECTRE and that is why Bond eventually comes onstage. He stumbles across the Dreamy Pines Motor Court by accident, and finds there Vivienne Michel being held hostage by two nasty-looking gunmen. A fight ensues, St. Patrick drives the metaphorical snakes out of the motel, and claims his prize.

007 Reloaded: From Russia With Love

SMERSH, the top-Secret Russian Murder Bureau, is furious. It has been involved in failure after failure, and the results have been disastrous for their reputation. So they have decided to strike back. Their target? The English Secret Service. They want to create a major scandal, one that will cause the public to go into an uproar and permanently stain the service’s reputation. And they have one particular target in mind. He’s an agent who has given SMERSH plenty of trouble in the past. And his name? James Bond.

SMERSH appoints Colonel Rosa Klebb as head of this operation. And the plan is a complex one, a brilliant piece of work designed by the world-class chess grandmaster Kronsteen. For this plan, Klebb needs a few elements. One of them is a mad killer named Red Grant, a vicious, amoral psychopath whose homicidal urges coincide with the full moon. But there’s also a role for a beautiful woman in this plan, and Corporal Tatiana Romanova is recruited for that part. And this forms the basis for the plot of Ian Fleming’s From Russia With Love.

007 Reloaded: Diamonds are Forever

Diamonds are being smuggled into the United States of America, and millions of dollars are being lost every year as a result of these criminal activities. The British Secret Service has finally got an idea of how the job is being done: they’ve intercepted a member of the gang who was supposed to help ferry an illegal load of diamonds from London to New York. But they haven’t let on that they know anything about this transaction: instead, they’re sending one of their top men in his place. His name’s Bond. James Bond.

Bond’s mission is simple in theory: find out how the diamond pipeline works and then report back. Bond is rather bored with the assignment. He has a low opinion of American gangsters, thinking they’re nothing but a bunch of Italian men stuffing themselves every evening and then knocking off a liquor store on the weekend to finance the next week. But as he finds out, those are the only gangsters who are ever noticed: there are gangsters behind these gangsters and more gangsters behind those. The landscape of criminal life in America is far more complex—and dangerous—than Bond could have ever dreamed…

007 Reloaded: Moonraker

James Bond is looking forward to a bit of a break. Having taken care of the Mr. Big threat, he is relaxing back home in England, living a dull office life and wondering when he might get another summons from his boss, M, to signal the start of another mission. It happens a lot sooner than he bargains for, but M is acting strangely. It turns out that M hasn’t got any mission in mind, but he wants to ask Bond for a personal favour.

You see, M is a member of Blades, an elite club for gentlemen who wish to play cards. Its membership is highly exclusive and prized among the upper classes, and M is one of the club members. Another member is Sir Hugo Drax, the brilliant industrialist who is currently building the Moonraker, a revolutionary rocket that will place any European capital within England’s firing range. He is admired by the people and revered by the media. He also cheats at cards.

In a London that is still run to some extent on the old-boy system, why would Sir Hugo commit the one crime that stings more than any other crime among gentlemen? Why risk his reputation and his club membership in order to win a few card games? M doesn’t know for certain, but if the story falls into the wrong hands, it might mean the end of Drax… and possibly the end of the Moonraker project. M asks Bond to come to Blades and find out how Drax is cheating and to stop him before he destroys himself.

007 Reloaded: Live and Let Die

James Bond, introduced to the world in Casino Royale, would see the light of day once again one year later, with the publication of the novel Live and Let Die. 007 is sent to the most bizarre, exotic location you could possibly imagine: The United States of America. Specifically, he starts off on the streets of New York City. Old gold coins have been showing up all over the States, and these appear to be part of a legendary treasure. But how did they get into the country? Somebody is smuggling the gold into the country, and in this case, all the roads lead to the larger-than-life gangster Mr. Big.

Larger-than-life is a literal description in this case. Mr. Big is simply an enormous man, the most powerful black criminal in all of America, possibly the world. He strikes terror into the heart of the black community and is believed to be the incarnation of the feared Baron Samedi, of the voodoo religion. They say he cannot be killed. They say that anyone who opposes him will meet death face-to-face. And they also say that he is an agent of SMERSH, the secret Russian organization that James Bond tangled with in Casino Royale.

007 Reloaded: Casino Royale

Note: This will be the first review in a series of James Bond reviews. In 2013, I intend to go through all 14 of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books in order of publication. This means that 007 will be appearing quite a bit for the next little while. These books hold a very special place in my heart, so I only hope that these reviews will convince someone unfamiliar with Fleming’s books to give them a chance.

“The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling – a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension – becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.”

Thus begins Casino Royale, the 1953 novel in which Ian Fleming introduced readers to the exploits of James Bond, secret agent extraordinaire. The stakes couldn’t possibly be higher. Word has gone around to the British Secret Service that Le Chiffre, the undercover Paymaster of a Communist-controlled trade union, is in financial trouble. He gambled his clients’ money on a string of brothels, but a new law was passed in France that banned his houses of pleasure. And thus, almost overnight Le Chiffre lost his investment.

In a desperate attempt to recoup his financial losses, Le Chiffre has come to Royale-les-Eaux. His plan is to win back his money in a high-stakes baccarat game. That’s where 007 comes in. His mission: humiliate Le Chiffre by beating him at the card table and thoroughly cleaning him out. Killing him would be futile – the opposition is already displeased with Le Chiffre, and SMERSH (a contraction of the Russian phrase smyert shpionam– “death to spies”) has reportedly sent a man to deliver punishment to Le Chiffre for bungling.

Fair and Foul Play

Hello everybody; welcome back to the blog. You’re just in time for me to reveal a brand-new feature, something that (I hope) will begin to make a regular appearance on this blog: a brand-new podcast entitled Fair and Foul Play.

What is Fair and Foul Play? The way I envision it, it’ll be a series of one-on-one conversations with other bloggers, mystery fans, and anyone else I can lure to the programme. These conversations will revolve around a specific topic within the mystery genre. For example, today I’m joined by Sergio, the blogger at the excellent site Tipping My Fedora. As it happens, both Sergio and I are big fans of audio productions, although we tend to specialize in different types of productions. The idea suddenly came: why not get together and talk about mysteries in audio? Audiobooks, radio plays, adaptations, dramatizations, original stuff: the complete package.

And so you’re looking at the result below, with Part 1 of our conversation forming episode 1a of Fair and Foul Play. Part 2 won’t be uploaded for a while, for the excellent reason that (a) I haven’t edited it yet and (b) the result would be over an hour long and that would be overwhelming all at once.

Please let us know what you think of the podcast, and if you’ve any interest in appearing in the future, feel free to let me know!

Sherlock who?

Over the last few days at work, I’ve had the enormous pleasure of listening to The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes as read by the brilliant Derek Jacobi. I listened to Jacobi reading The House of Silk last year and absolutely loved his reading: he made Dr. Watson sound intelligent and charming, and not a buffoon like Nigel Bruce admittedly did. (That doesn’t mean I dislike Nigel Bruce as Watson, I just don’t think he’s anything like the character Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about.) I don’t think you could possibly find a better actor than Jacobi to read these stories aloud. He makes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s prose come vividly to life, so that each story, even if forgettable, becomes a fantastic auditory experience.

I was well-familiar with these tales and so I was reacquainting myself with them. I found that I enjoyed them all very much after all this time. Truly, Sherlock Holmes is a timeless character— I am revisiting these stories yet again, and every time, I find that I love Conan Doyle’s world! The stories only seem to get better with age.

There is one omission here: The Adventure of the Cardboard Box, which in the U.S. is included in His Last Bow, was not among the tales I listened to, so I decided not to review it. For other reviews of Holmes shorts, please take a look at The Puzzle Doctor’s site, In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, where the doc is discovering the Holmes tales and finding out just how much he’s been missing out on!

The Care Bears Solve a Murder

I really don’t think I can be very fair to today’s book, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P. D. James. I’ve taken James to task on this blog before for spreading the wrong ideas about the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, but I approached her book with an open mind and with eager anticipation, since I’d read many positive comments about it. One of the things I love about my job is that I get plenty of time to listen to audiobooks, and I’d managed to find an audiobook version read by one Davina Porter.

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman has got a marvellous title and an excellent idea for a plot. Bernie Pryde, from Pryde’s Detective Agency, commits suicide, and leaves the business to his partner, the young Cordelia Gray. Soon afterwards, Cordelia gets her first case, when she is hired by Sir Ronald Callender. His son Mark had recently left college and gone to work as a gardener, and was found hung, an apparent suicide. There seems to be no doubt about the verdict, but Sir Ronald is not happy. He wants to know why Mark killed himself and whether he was responsible for it or not.

We like to get the trial over with quickly, because it's the sentence that's really the fun!

It’s rare for me to be thoroughly disgusted by a novel. There have been plenty of unpleasant reading experiences, such as Anthony Wynne’s The Toll House Murder or Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye. I have been alarmed a handful of times, such as with a disturbing central character in Peter Lovesey’s Mad Hatter’s Holiday. But until now, only George Baxt’s The Affair at Royalties had thoroughly disgusted me— I can now add Mickey Spillane’s I, The Jury to the list.

Spillane was once the most vilified writer in America. His hero, Mike Hammer, is as politically incorrect as they come. He refuses to forgive the Japanese for the war, he plays games with his secretary, he sleeps with every woman he comes into contact with on the job, and he threatens or beats up half the suspects he interrogates. And that’s just the first few chapters.

So Long, My Sweet

Earlier this year, I attempted to struggle through Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye and failed. The book started off well, but at the point at which I gave up, the plot was going nowhere, you could see the ending coming for miles ahead, and it was so overly padded that I simply couldn’t face the prospect of finishing the book. I put it down, wrote a harshly negative and sarcastic series of comments, and concluded that, after all, Raymond Chandler couldn’t write, and his stories were no more realistic than those he blasted in his famous essay The Simple Art of Murder.

So perhaps it’s only fair to give Raymond Chandler another go. My motives were not entirely altruistic; I’ve been preparing to paint my room, putting all my books into boxes and the like (which, by the way, resulted in my desk falling apart yesterday, which will make a lovely start to the school year). So I’ve been listening to an audiobook, and Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely was the only one of his I could find which I hadn’t read yet. I had no intention of returning to the frankly incompetent The Big Sleep, and my thoughts on The Long Goodbye are already well-known.