From Russia With Love

My project to read all of the original Bond novels in 2015 continues!

Before reading From Russia With Love I listened to the 2012 Radio 4 adaptation and also watched the movie again (this was the second James Bond film but the fifth Bond book). Both of these were useful to familiarise myself with what was to come in the book. The novel itself continues on in the same vein as previous books in the series and made me realise just how closely the first few Bond movies got the tone of the paperbacks right. By right I don't mean that I agree with Bond's misogyny and use of inappropriate language but how they managed to translate the now familiar Bond formula to the big screen. From Russia With Love sees a villain who like to talk in detail about his plans instead of just killing Bond, we have lots of action, including the excellent train scene between Bond and Red Grant, some gadgets and of course sexy parts (gypsy girl fight; boobs exposed!)

Interestingly, the first quarter of the book doesn't feature Bond at all; the plot is described from a Russian perspective and Bond doesn't appear until much later. This was an unexpected and brave move by Fleming. In this section we are also introduced to all of the main baddies via some nice set pieces. So with all of the main elements of the story in place a depressed Bond is revealed, haven broken up with Tiffany Case, mooching about, having breakfast with his housekeeper, getting scared on a turbulent flight and wondering about the morality of his mission. The literary version of Bond therefore comes across as much more human.

The plot line leans heavily on the Cold War paranoia around at the time of its writing and is fairly unbelievable, even for a Bond book: Romanova falls in love with Bond after seeing his photograph. But then of course, actually falls in love with him. Red Grant (one of the best Bond villains ever) comes across almost like a Terminator: a completely relentless killing machine who stops at nothing. Fleming's writing is really intense and snappy. The reader is transported to exotic locations which are described in atmospheric detail and help to provide just enough realism to the plot so it doesn't descend into pure fantasy.

However, as I've mentioned in previous Bond novel reviews, Bond seems to evade death through luck alone as opposed to any real skill on his behalf plus he misses some fairly major clues as to what's actually happening to him. So, not he's not a super-hero after all.

It also occurred to me that being a man in the 1950s seemed like hard work. It appears that you constantly had to be prepared to spank misbehaving ladies or even give them a beating if they put on too much weight. Really?! Perhaps it was only playboy spies that had to do this and not normal run-of-the-mill people? By novel number five I'm beginning to realise that writing realistic female characters isn't Fleming's strong point. For sure, the female characters have more dimension and depth than normal but Tatiana Romanova, comes over as a particularly dumb Soviet spy who simply agrees to prostitute herself for Russia and Rosa Klebb is a mad bisexual S&M loving granny.

So in summary From Russia With Love is another entertaining read and probably the best Bond novel so far. In fact, if you only ever want to read one Bond book, make sure it's this one.