Writing from the Grave? Ian Fleming’s Devil May Care

What’s the next best thing to being James Bond? Writing a James Bond novel, of course! And author Sebastian Faulks (Birdsong, Engelby) got to do just that when he was commissioned by the estate of Bond originator Ian Fleming to write the latest Bond escapade, Devil May Care, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Fleming’s birth. The catch: write it as if it was written by Fleming himself. In fact, the novel is attributed to “Sebastian Faulks writing as Ian Fleming”. Fleming’s name is even written in larger print on the dust jacket. Is this really an homage to Fleming, an attempt to re-humanize the character and bring him back to his roots? Or is it actually a dismissal of previous post-Fleming Bond novels by the likes of Kingsley Amis, John Gardner, and, most recently, Raymond Benson? Perhaps it’s both.

Set in 1967, Devil May Care begins with Bond on a sabbatical, recuperating from his battle with Scaramanga in The Man With the Golden Gun while enjoying what the world has to offer without having to save it in the process. He’s so fed up with his situation that he’s actually considering retiring: ‘You’re tired,’ he says to himself early on, ‘You’re played out. Finished.’ But when he gets an urgent call to meet with M, the head of MI6, back at headquarters in London, he picks up and heads back to merry old England as if he had no other choice. At the meeting, he’s briefed about a pharmaceutical magnate named Julius Gorner who may or may not be involved in the illicit drug trade. Bond’s task is a simple one: shadow Gorner and find out as much information as you can about him. As it turns out, Gorner has much more up his sleeve than turning a fast buck through drug trafficking. Of course, Bond being Bond, we’re treated to a variety of different locales and set pieces where 007 does more than just tail his target. There’s plenty of exotic locales, exquisitely described meals, hard-drinking (and not just the famous shaken martinis, either), a cigarette smoked on almost every page, and the obligatory “Bond Girl”. In this case, she’s named Scarlet Papava, and Bond falls for her in a way that fans of the film franchise would not be accustomed to. This is a more human James Bond, capable of falling in love, getting injured, and needing some time to lick his wounds before setting off on another adventure. The fact that the villain, Gorner, has no more complex a reason to want to ruin England than that he feels that England in general laughed at him and his simian hand (hairy with no opposable thumb) can seem a little trite, but how different is that than a villain who just wants all the money in the world? If anything, a wounded ego and a fractured worldview are more realistic than simple greed.

Faulks’ own novels are written in more of a literary style, and perhaps that’s part of why Fleming’s estate chose him to write Devil May Care; he would more easily be able to adapt his style to that of Fleming than would someone who already has developed his or her own voice within the genre. This isn’t a particularly deep and thought-provoking novel by any stretch of the imagination, but it does offer anybody even remotely aware of James Bond a taste of the familiar. In the end, Faulks has succeeded where other post-Fleming Bond-ians couldn’t: he has brought the character back from the super-spy caricature he had become in recent years and injected him with a little bit of humanity. Don’t be completely fooled, though: Devil May Care is still a James Bond novel, and what that is is simply hard-boiled crime fiction for the jet set. It’s a page turner of a book that might not keep you guessing at every turn, but it does keep you on the edge of your seat throughout…and what more can you ask for from James Bond?