Wesley Britton's Blog - Posts Tagged "ian-fleming"

I’ve lost count of how many novels I’ve read over the years that fictionalize author Ian Fleming’s involvement in Naval Intelligence in World War II. In each case, known history, speculative biography, and obvious literary invention meet. Most yarns by the likes of Damian Stevenson and Aaron Cooley seek to present foreshadowings of what Fleming would write in his James Bond books. The imaginations of such writers are usually quite fanciful with Fleming being more the action figure than he actually was.

I can’t recall any previous work quite as literate as Francine Mathews’ To Bad to die which weaves flashbacks from Fleming’s childhood into his investigation into a Nazi plot to assassinate Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at their November 1943 conference in Tehran to plan out the Normandy invasion. Very convincingly, Mathews sketches many portraits of important historical figures from the “Big Three” to their entourages and family members, code-breaker Allan Turing, broadcaster Edward R. Morrow, Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek, and U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, Averell Harriman.

Although little of this story happened or could have happened in 1943, Mathews is especially believable creating the milieu in which all these figures walked, notably using vocabulary and terms of English schoolboys when Fleming was young. Hints of the Bond books to come include references to martinis shaken, not stirred, a voice inside Fleming’s head giving him the alter ego of 007, a false passport giving Commander Fleming the fake name of James Bond, and a torture scene is clearly meant to seem the inspiration for a very similar situation in 1953’s Casino Royale. The death of Fleming’s father during World War I is offered as the psychological motivation for Fleming’s spinning out fantastic yarns. In short, Mathews digs deeper than many other writers to give readers more than a hot and fast page-turner.

Obviously, Bond fans, World War II buffs, and lovers of espionage yarns in general are a perfect audience for Too Bad to Die. Aficionados of suspense and mystery stories should find much to appreciate from Francine Mathews’ descriptive tale, even if few readers will miss the obvious clues that reveal who the main villain is long before he levels a pistol at Fleming. Still, I can’t help but think the actual creator of James Bond would approve of this one.


Purchase Too Bad to Die at:
https://www.amazon.com/Too-Bad-Die-Fr...

This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Oct. 29, 2016:
http://dpli.ir/E1oQiL

The Pursuit of Happiness
Alan Trustman
Paperback: 338 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (July 1, 2017)
ISBN-10:1546786120
ISBN-13:978-1546786122
https://www.amazon.com/Pursuit-Happin...


Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton

Alan Trustman’s long and distinguished writing career began with his screenplays for films like The Thomas Crown Affair, Bullitt, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs, Steve McQueen: The Man and Le Mans, and these are but a few of his 15 movies made for both the large screen and television. At one time, he was the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood, but now works in other ventures including scribing novels.

According to publicity for his debut novel, Pursuit of Happiness, his fiction” reads and moves with the same crime thriller speed as his movies.” That’s one way to put it. Another is to describe his style as taut, terse, tight no-nonsense action with little exposition or description. You could say Pursuit of Happiness is in the minimalist tradition of Ernest Hemingway. Here’s a sample to demonstrate this point:

“We sat. There were plenty of fish all about, some bigger than those we had seen before, all of them feeding, not quite a frenzy, but lots of fish, circling, swirling, all right to left, then all left to right, and then vanishing suddenly, fleeing. A shark, a huge one.
A great white. A ten footer. A thousand pounds.
Teeth. All I could see was teeth. Mouth open, swerving, coming toward us. Would he bite the bars?
No! He lost interest. Disappeared! Lucky us!”

The novel is centered on government contract killer Burt Dixon who tells us his story in the first person. As a result, much of the time we know exactly what he is doing, kick by kick, breath by breath, and what he is thinking. He enters the stage by blowing away seven would-be robbers in a Boston restaurant which ignites a gang war in the city Dixon claims is the U.S. capital for contract killings. In short order, we meet other characters in his specialized circle including Boss Man, Bernstein, and Sinclair. Dixon is assigned the task of learning all about great white sharks in underwater cages off a luxury liner off the coast of Key West. Why? Beyond keeping Dixon out of Boston and out of trouble, the point isn’t immediately clear. At least, not until he is sent on a mission and the Middle East.

I’ve read reviews of Pursuit of Happiness comparing Trustman’s style to that of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels. I understand that comparison. Pursuit of Happiness very much reads like an old fashioned spy story with a very tight focus on one main protagonist and not the multi-layer, multi-character epics we’ve become accustomed to in espionage yarns in recent years. But, unlike Fleming, there’s no larger-than-life bad guy. The missions, and they’re not of global, international consequences, are unrelated small scale operations. One scene containing all the pyrotechnics in the book comes and goes in only a few pages. The conclusion is very surprising and is very human, considering the hard-nosed narrator we’ve come to know.

In short, The Pursuit of Happiness is a very fast-paced thrill ride, especially in all the underwater scenes. It should appeal to readers who like down-to-earth, gritty, and very believable espionage adventures. I must admit, I’m not sure about the book’s title. There must be something ironic about it that eludes me completely.


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Sept. 7, 2017 at:
http://dpli.ir/oxFSUn

The Blockade Runners
Peter Vollmer
Print Length: 379 pages
Publisher: Endeavour Media (August 17, 2018)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
ASIN: B07G4FX1Y2
https://www.amazon.com/Blockade-Runne...


Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton

My first paragraph here is almost word-for-word how I opened my 2017 review of Peter Vollmer’s A Question of Allegiance:

I may not have been the very first one, but I was certainly among the earliest reviewers of the novels of South African writer Peter Borchard a.k.a. Peter Vollmer. My reviews began with 2011’s Relentless Pursuit, continued with 2012’s Diamonds Are But Stone, and 2015’s Left For Dead. Of special interest was his 2015 Per Fine Ounce, a continuation novel featuring a character named Geoffrey Peace created by fellow South African novelist Geoffrey Jenkins, a writer with notable connections with Ian Fleming.

Once again, I’m happy to report Vollmer remains a master in his descriptions of international settings and very developed characters. He’s able to vividly capture historical times and places; in the case of The Blockade Runners, his focus is on Rhodesia in 1965 when the U.N. has imposed an embargo on the country to put pressure on Prime Minister Ian Smith to accept majority rule and not continue his minority white government.

The main character of the novel is rugged, womanizing South African banker David Tuck. Despite his military background, he’s known for his accounting skills, especially with international accounts. His South African bank, in its Rhodesian offices, recruits him to be the paymaster for smugglers wanting to bring in oil, weapons, and helicopters illegally into Rhodesia. He has no idea what he’s getting into, to put it mildly.

Soon, he’s paired with the alluring Gisela Mentz, a former East German operative for the Stasi. Together, blending Gisela’s undercover training and Tuck’s quick reflexes and resourcefulness, they travel to Europe and the Middle East to arrange for the secret transfers of funds to smugglers willing to run the U.N. embargo. While France and Germany are willing to look the other way, Britain has a very different agenda. MI6 goes so far as to send out assassins to take out Tuck and Mentz as covertly as possible.

So Tuck and Mentz, quickly romantically involved, are in constant danger and have a series of near-misses and escapes. Adding to the danger, Mentz has inherited a Rhodesian farm targeted by black revolutionaries who want to chase whites out of their country. So, the pair are literally under the gun both when operating around the globe and at home as well.

While The Blockade Runners may not be a pure spy vs. spy espionage thriller, it has all the tropes of such novels. There are numerous chase scenes, deadly fights in exotic locations, clever twists from David Tuck’s fertile mind, generous sex scenes, and complex international chess moves. In short, The Blockade Runners should appeal to readers of Fleming, Graham Greene, Eric Ambler, and all the other old-fashioned thriller writers versed in international intrigue. Vollmer has gone down this road before—I’m delighted to see he’s at it again. I also appreciate the irony—from beginning to end, readers will be rooting for the bad guys. After all, blockade runners are the criminals.

Wes Britton’s review of A Question of Allegiance first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Sept. 23, 2017 at:
http://dpli.ir/LtmtBi

Wes Britton’s 2011 review of Relentless Pursuit was posted at:
http://www.bookpleasures.com/websitep...

Wes Britton’s 2012 review of Diamonds Are But Stone is up at:
http://www.bookpleasures.com/websitep...

Wes Britton’s 2015 review of Left for Dead is up at:
http://www.bookpleasures.com/websitep...

Wes Britton’s 2015 article,” The Re-Boot of PER FINE OUNCE: A Continuation Novel That Isn’t What You Think” was published at:
https://literary007.com/2015/03/25/th...

Wes Britton’s review of The Blockade Runners first appeared Sept. 11, 2018 at:
https://waa.ai/aI7E

Ian Fleming's Seven Deadlier Sins: A Collection of Essays
Literary 007, Britton, Wesley, Amanatullah, Ihsan, Welton, Benjamin, May, Michael, Biddulph, Edward et al
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (December 28, 2019)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 48 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1652240144
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1652240143
https://www.amazon.com/Ian-Flemings-S...

Full Disclosure: Before May of this year, I didn’t feel I could write a credible review of this collection as I’m the author of the first article which takes up about 11 pages of the 48 page print edition. My essay on “avarice” was the first entry in the seven part series when Artistic License Renewed first posted it on their website on July 7, 2015. The subsequent six essays appeared periodically thereafter at the website until the editor asked us if we’d permit him to collect the series and publish it as both an e-book and print title in 2019.
This month, I was motivated to write a response to a review of the print edition posted at Amazon on May 2, 2021 that I found extremely off target.
I won’t repeat the entire review here, but I’ll start my response to the review’s very first sentences: “This is not by Ian Fleming. It's not edited by Ian Fleming. It is not a comparison about the original Seven Deadly Sins and Fleming's Seven Deadlier Sins.”
That’s all true. Nowhere is it claimed the book is by Fleming; it’s writers commenting on Fleming’s 007 novels through the prisms of the terms Fleming never wrote about himself but listed In his foreword to his 1962 book he edited, The Seven Deadly Sins. In that foreword, Fleming declared that the traditional seven deadly sins — PRIDE, ENVY, ANGER, SLOTH [accidie], COVETOUSNESS, GLUTTONY and LUST — were no longer sufficient. Instead, he proposed seven deadlier sins more worthy of a one way ticket to Hell, namely AVARICE, CRUELTY, HYPOCRISY, MALICE, MORAL COWARDICE, SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS & SNOBBERY.
The grumpy reviewer breezed past that point, saying “This is a collection of essays by authors I'm unfamiliar with on the Deadlier Sins in James Bond movies and books, plus cultural references, like a Saturday Night Live sketch. Not worth your time.”
I have to concede we essayists aren’t all widely-known Bond scholars, which hurts a bit. I’ve written four books on movie, TV, and literary espionage including Spy Television (2003), Beyond Bond: Spies in Fiction and Film (2005), Onscreen and Undercover: The Ultimate Book of movie Espionage (2006) and countless essays, articles, and reviews in print anthologies and reference works as well as numerous print and online periodicals and websites. I’ve been interviewed on James Bond and espionage by TV, Podcast, and radio broadcasters for decades in Boston, Washington D.C., Malaysia, Denmark, Germany, Turkey, and, most recently, I was the only English-speaking spy expert for a one-hour Al Jazeera documentary. I’ve appeared several times at the International Spy Museum and the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention. None of this, admittedly, makes me a household name. But I do got some cred, yes?
I can’t speak to the track record of the other contributors, but I can say I just reread the book and was again impressed with the depth of the research, the seriousness of the critiques, and the insights on a par with academic scholars discussing authors like Leo Tolstoy, Walt Whitman, or Mark Twain. The book was not “whipped out in 2020” as the reviewer claimed.
In particular, I’d like to compliment Edward Biddulph who wrote on “hypocrisy” and Michael May’s essay on “Self-righteousness.” To be fair, all the essays, even those only three or five pages long, gave me fresh perspectives and new insights any serious Ian Fleming aficionado would benefit from reading.
I should add readers don’t need to purchase a copy of the collection as all seven essays are still available in their original forms at:

https://literary007.com/category/the-...

Speaking of cred, scan that website and you can enjoy a rich well of Ian Fleming focused resources. Be your own judge and don’t be dissuaded by an unknown online critic with no cred I’m aware of.

Links to many of my interviews and online materials can be found at:

https://drwesleybritton.com/

this essay was first posted in the BookPleasures special section devoted to essays contributed by various authors.

https://waa.ai/xtVt

If you were reading books back in 1965 like I was, you might remember a little red paperback called Double O Seven, James Bond, A Report by O.F. Snelling. It was the only such title personally authorized by Ian Fleming. Part of the book’s initial success was that its publication roughly coincided with the death of Fleming in August 1964 and included footnotes discussing the recently issued Bond novel, You Only Live Twice. Focused on the literary 007 with passing mentions of the first Sean Connery films, Snelling examined the predecessors to Bond, his adversaries, and especially the women in the novels. Knowing novelist Kingsley Amis was also working on a similar study (published as The James Bond Dossier in 1965), Snelling rushed out his book to compete with Amis, and the two titles have been frequently compared ever since as the earliest serious studies of the James Bond phenomena. Snelling’s title sold over a million copies, appeared in French, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, and Israeli editions and translations, and it came out in the United States in 1965 under the imprint of the New American Library, Ian Fleming's own publishers.
Readers of the original paperback experienced Oswald Frederick Snelling’s literary critique of the Bond novels in five sections.
First, Snelling examined “His Predecessors”, “those upper-crust fictional heroes who performed feats of sexless derring-do long before the advent of the permissive society: leftover puppets from the age of chivalry.”
“His Image” was a section which analyzed “James Bond personally in the minutest detail, from the black comma of hair which falls across his brow to the casual shoes he wears on his feet.”
“His Women,” as the reviewers noticed, “is the longest part. Then comes ‘His Adversaries.’: Finally, ‘His Future.’” In Snelling’s view, this was bright indeed for 007.
The final page was a reproduction of a now famous watermark he saw on his typing paper – “Bond-Extra Strong.”
In notes written long before Snelling died on January 31, 2001 in London, the writer concluded by describing his now classic critical study: “‘Double 0 Seven’ set out to examine and to analyze James Bond by treating him as a real person. It was not a long book, and it made no attempt to be highbrow, abstruse, or involved. It was deliberately written in a racy and easy-to-read style. Certainly it is jokey and humorous, but it is both lighthearted and serious at the same time.”

Despite the book’s original success, Snelling and his literary executor, Ron Payne, were never successful finding a publisher interested in issuing a new edition. Instead, The first authorized full-text publication of Snelling’s 1964 book in over 40 years, now with the title he preferred – James Bond Under the Microscope debuted at my spywise.net website and is back again exclusively at spywisesecretdossier.com.
Snelling’s 1981 preface has been added as an update to this PDF publication. We added excerpts and passages from letters exchanged between Ron Payne and Snelling beginning in 1979. These letters, edited especially for SpyWise.net, are introduced with notes by Ron Payne. The passages show Snelling’s changing views on 007 over the years, share some of his views on spy films, television, and writers, and perhaps include enough of Snelling’s life to give perspective into the literary life of an extraordinary writer and thinker.
And, while not directly related to Mr. Bond, we also offer the first online publication of an essay Snelling wrote for the Antiquarian Book Monthly Review in 1981. This discussion of “Clubland” writer Dornford Yates was seen only by subscribers to that magazine, and never available in America. (Yates, as mentioned in James Bond Under the Microscope, was very much a literary forbearer to Ian Fleming.)
You can find all these offerings at:
https://www.spywisesecretdossier.com/...