Rereading 007 - Dr No
This story is positioned, particularly by M at the beginning of the book, as a tropical holiday in the sun. Thanks to the film, it also has one of the most iconic visual images of all James Bond scenes, that of Honeychile Rider searching for shells on said tropical island. This all contributes to a slightly frivolous feel to this adventure.
James Bond has only just survived the snake poison of Rosa Klebb's spiked shoes. M is not impressed with his carelessness and has some sharp words for him, some of which involve replacing his beloved Beretta with a Walther PPK. When the Armourer pops into the room to advise on this, that's three men in the room all with grey eyes - surely a statistical anomaly.
Separately, we've seen the Secret Service set-up on the island of Jamaica and the idiocy of Strangways' routine, interrupting a daily bridge game for a daily call to HQ. Why not start the bridge game AFTER the phone-call? Because Strangways' murder is needed to start the story, obviously. It's the perfect 'soft case' needed to rehabilitate James Bond, according to M. Privately he thinks there's nothing in it. I love seeing how Bond, often portrayed as just an aggressive action man in the films, is also an intelligent detective - he's the one who has the sense to ask what Strangways' last case was. I also love the quirkiness of the way trouble comes from the seemingly insignificant concerns of a wildlife society and M's contempt for all this fuss over 'a covey of pink storks' on the small, privately owned guano island of Crab Key.
Bond is sent out to Jamaica and is nearly as careless as Strangways when he arrives, summoning the Cayman Islander Quarrel (also grey-eyed) to work with him and arranging to be met at the airport in the dead man's car to ensure that the villains know exactly who he is. Likewise, Bond knows exactly who the villain is - as with Live And Let Die and Diamonds Are Forever, his target is clear from the off. There's none of the whodunit puzzle of Moonraker.
What there is however is an excellent scene involving a giant poisonous centipede which is a masterclass in building tension and shows Bond's courage and self-discipline under fire. How many people could have lain that still while the centipede trampled over his body?
It's time to leave Kingston and disconcertingly, Bond opts for the same training routine in the same forward base as before, when he was in Jamaica in Live And Let Die. IRL, this would perhaps be naturally enough but in fictional terms, when he arrives in Beau Desert, it's distracting. Like Bond himself, you can't help but ask of Solitaire 'what had happened to her? Where was she?' Also, were Dr No and Mr Big at one point both operating their secret hideouts within a stone's throw of each other on their separate lairs on Crab Key and the Isle of Surprise? What would happen if they fell out as neighbours?
The important difference this time is that while Quarrel was unworried by tackling the Isle of Surprise, he is ominously worried about going to Crab Key and asks Bond to take out life insurance on him, which in fictional terms is like saying you plan to be a pro footballer after the war in a WW2 film.
Anyway, they canoe over to Crab Key and hide up until daybreak, cue Bond's famous encounter with Honeychile Rider on the beach looking for shells. I am in two minds about Honey - I like her knowledge of wildlife, but find her childish vocabulary slightly disconcerting. Once again, as in From Russia With Love, Bond's dominant emotions are compassion and tenderness - he's travelled a very long way from the curt man who is bored and annoyed by having to work with Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale. You can't help wondering what had changed for Ian Fleming - was the writing style of CR purely the pose of an inexperienced writer mimicking his peers (Ambler, Greene, etc) or did he himself become more compassionate and gentle with age?
Unfortunately, when Bond's smitten with a girl, he often makes tactical mistakes. There's no sensible reason for them to hang around on Crab Key once Dr No's men have shot at them with machine-guns - he has the proof he needs that these people are breaking the law. But hang around they do, going upriver to look for more evidence, encountering more henchmen, and finally encountering the terrifying 'dragon' that both Quarrel and Honey have spoken of. Bond has pooh-poohed the warnings of both these intelligent locals but he's wrong and this time it's Quarrel who pays the price.
I can't see why this was necessary, any more than the death of Darko Kerim in FRWL. Yes, it fuels Bond's anger, but is that enough of a reason? There's plenty else to do that. Not immediately, admittedly, as Bond and Honey are introduced into a luxury hotel/spa set-up, but things are clearly only going to get worse. It's time for the 'dinner with the evil mastermind' scene.
Finally, we get to meet Dr No, with his pincers for hands, metal eyes and so forth. As Bond points out, all of this is pretty unremarkable stuff in a post-war world where a lot of people have damaged bodies. He's already met Hugo Drax, for instance. Bond is never better than when he's cornered and I admire his calmness here, concentrating on disconcerting his enemy, reassuring Honey and trying anything he can to lift the odds in his favour, for example by trying to get hold of some weapons.
Dr No obviously wants to give a speech about his own mad brilliance and then to polish off his adversaries in a ridiculously implausible and unnecessarily long-winded way. The speech is underwhelming - managing a guano mountain is clearly not enough for an ambitious Bond villain, but his plans for tinkering with American satellites don't really convince. This is essentially a big fish in a REALLY small pond.
His plans for Honeychile are to leave her out as bait for the thousands of crabs who stream across the island at this time of year. Fleming knew an awful lot about Jamaican wildlife and must have been saving this idea up to use at some point. But it's nothing to Dr No's intentions for Bond, who is to be released into some kind of bizarre obstacle course.
It's a ridiculous idea - why would any sort of villain give up space in his hideout for such a thing? - and it shouldn't work but for me, it does. Bond has to escape out of his cell, wriggle along an AC duct, climb up a vertical shaft, withstand intense heat, etc. Every inch of his journey is conveyed in agonising detail. The highlights for me involve more creatures - particularly the furry tarantulas waiting for him halfway along a shaft who would have got him for sure if he had not stolen a cigarette lighter from the dining-table.
At the end of a chase is a deepwater inlet sealed off by a high fence. What could be in that water? Sharks? No - in one of the many scenes which make me see connections between Fleming and Willard Price, it's a giant squid.
I love this scene, even though after several rereadings, I can't make any sense of it. Sensibly, Bond climbs the fence so he is on the seaward side. The squid comes up on the landward side but attacks him through the fence and Bond is supposed to be in imminent danger of death. But the squid could not pull him through or over the fence or break the fence, so how can this be? And why doesn't Bond simply swim out to sea, away from the creature?
It doesn't quite work. I think Fleming would have done better to dispense with the fence altogether and just have the squid live in the inlet and be able to grab you before you can escape from it. (Never mind the fact that giant squid are deepwater animals and probably could not survive at shallow levels, something Fleming must have known.)
Having dealt with the squid, Bond heads to Dr No's complex to look for Honey. On the way, he buries Dr No under a giant pile of guano, a perfect ending for a Bond villain. Then he finds Honey - it turns out the crabs weren't dangerous at all and she knew that. They escape in the marsh buggy and then in the canoe, back to Beau Desert for a second bout of recuperation there for Bond. He already plans to help Honey fix her broken nose (not sure about that) and help her get a job at the Jamaican Institute's zoology department where she can use her natural history knowledge (much better). There are few instances in the books where we can feel confident about the Bond girl's future professional career, but Gala Brand in Moonraker is one of them and this is another.
James Bond has only just survived the snake poison of Rosa Klebb's spiked shoes. M is not impressed with his carelessness and has some sharp words for him, some of which involve replacing his beloved Beretta with a Walther PPK. When the Armourer pops into the room to advise on this, that's three men in the room all with grey eyes - surely a statistical anomaly.
Separately, we've seen the Secret Service set-up on the island of Jamaica and the idiocy of Strangways' routine, interrupting a daily bridge game for a daily call to HQ. Why not start the bridge game AFTER the phone-call? Because Strangways' murder is needed to start the story, obviously. It's the perfect 'soft case' needed to rehabilitate James Bond, according to M. Privately he thinks there's nothing in it. I love seeing how Bond, often portrayed as just an aggressive action man in the films, is also an intelligent detective - he's the one who has the sense to ask what Strangways' last case was. I also love the quirkiness of the way trouble comes from the seemingly insignificant concerns of a wildlife society and M's contempt for all this fuss over 'a covey of pink storks' on the small, privately owned guano island of Crab Key.
Bond is sent out to Jamaica and is nearly as careless as Strangways when he arrives, summoning the Cayman Islander Quarrel (also grey-eyed) to work with him and arranging to be met at the airport in the dead man's car to ensure that the villains know exactly who he is. Likewise, Bond knows exactly who the villain is - as with Live And Let Die and Diamonds Are Forever, his target is clear from the off. There's none of the whodunit puzzle of Moonraker.
What there is however is an excellent scene involving a giant poisonous centipede which is a masterclass in building tension and shows Bond's courage and self-discipline under fire. How many people could have lain that still while the centipede trampled over his body?
It's time to leave Kingston and disconcertingly, Bond opts for the same training routine in the same forward base as before, when he was in Jamaica in Live And Let Die. IRL, this would perhaps be naturally enough but in fictional terms, when he arrives in Beau Desert, it's distracting. Like Bond himself, you can't help but ask of Solitaire 'what had happened to her? Where was she?' Also, were Dr No and Mr Big at one point both operating their secret hideouts within a stone's throw of each other on their separate lairs on Crab Key and the Isle of Surprise? What would happen if they fell out as neighbours?
The important difference this time is that while Quarrel was unworried by tackling the Isle of Surprise, he is ominously worried about going to Crab Key and asks Bond to take out life insurance on him, which in fictional terms is like saying you plan to be a pro footballer after the war in a WW2 film.
Anyway, they canoe over to Crab Key and hide up until daybreak, cue Bond's famous encounter with Honeychile Rider on the beach looking for shells. I am in two minds about Honey - I like her knowledge of wildlife, but find her childish vocabulary slightly disconcerting. Once again, as in From Russia With Love, Bond's dominant emotions are compassion and tenderness - he's travelled a very long way from the curt man who is bored and annoyed by having to work with Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale. You can't help wondering what had changed for Ian Fleming - was the writing style of CR purely the pose of an inexperienced writer mimicking his peers (Ambler, Greene, etc) or did he himself become more compassionate and gentle with age?
Unfortunately, when Bond's smitten with a girl, he often makes tactical mistakes. There's no sensible reason for them to hang around on Crab Key once Dr No's men have shot at them with machine-guns - he has the proof he needs that these people are breaking the law. But hang around they do, going upriver to look for more evidence, encountering more henchmen, and finally encountering the terrifying 'dragon' that both Quarrel and Honey have spoken of. Bond has pooh-poohed the warnings of both these intelligent locals but he's wrong and this time it's Quarrel who pays the price.
I can't see why this was necessary, any more than the death of Darko Kerim in FRWL. Yes, it fuels Bond's anger, but is that enough of a reason? There's plenty else to do that. Not immediately, admittedly, as Bond and Honey are introduced into a luxury hotel/spa set-up, but things are clearly only going to get worse. It's time for the 'dinner with the evil mastermind' scene.
Finally, we get to meet Dr No, with his pincers for hands, metal eyes and so forth. As Bond points out, all of this is pretty unremarkable stuff in a post-war world where a lot of people have damaged bodies. He's already met Hugo Drax, for instance. Bond is never better than when he's cornered and I admire his calmness here, concentrating on disconcerting his enemy, reassuring Honey and trying anything he can to lift the odds in his favour, for example by trying to get hold of some weapons.
Dr No obviously wants to give a speech about his own mad brilliance and then to polish off his adversaries in a ridiculously implausible and unnecessarily long-winded way. The speech is underwhelming - managing a guano mountain is clearly not enough for an ambitious Bond villain, but his plans for tinkering with American satellites don't really convince. This is essentially a big fish in a REALLY small pond.
His plans for Honeychile are to leave her out as bait for the thousands of crabs who stream across the island at this time of year. Fleming knew an awful lot about Jamaican wildlife and must have been saving this idea up to use at some point. But it's nothing to Dr No's intentions for Bond, who is to be released into some kind of bizarre obstacle course.
It's a ridiculous idea - why would any sort of villain give up space in his hideout for such a thing? - and it shouldn't work but for me, it does. Bond has to escape out of his cell, wriggle along an AC duct, climb up a vertical shaft, withstand intense heat, etc. Every inch of his journey is conveyed in agonising detail. The highlights for me involve more creatures - particularly the furry tarantulas waiting for him halfway along a shaft who would have got him for sure if he had not stolen a cigarette lighter from the dining-table.
At the end of a chase is a deepwater inlet sealed off by a high fence. What could be in that water? Sharks? No - in one of the many scenes which make me see connections between Fleming and Willard Price, it's a giant squid.
I love this scene, even though after several rereadings, I can't make any sense of it. Sensibly, Bond climbs the fence so he is on the seaward side. The squid comes up on the landward side but attacks him through the fence and Bond is supposed to be in imminent danger of death. But the squid could not pull him through or over the fence or break the fence, so how can this be? And why doesn't Bond simply swim out to sea, away from the creature?
It doesn't quite work. I think Fleming would have done better to dispense with the fence altogether and just have the squid live in the inlet and be able to grab you before you can escape from it. (Never mind the fact that giant squid are deepwater animals and probably could not survive at shallow levels, something Fleming must have known.)
Having dealt with the squid, Bond heads to Dr No's complex to look for Honey. On the way, he buries Dr No under a giant pile of guano, a perfect ending for a Bond villain. Then he finds Honey - it turns out the crabs weren't dangerous at all and she knew that. They escape in the marsh buggy and then in the canoe, back to Beau Desert for a second bout of recuperation there for Bond. He already plans to help Honey fix her broken nose (not sure about that) and help her get a job at the Jamaican Institute's zoology department where she can use her natural history knowledge (much better). There are few instances in the books where we can feel confident about the Bond girl's future professional career, but Gala Brand in Moonraker is one of them and this is another.
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