Octopussy & The Living Daylights

Fleming was planning a second Bond short story collection at the time of his death along the lines of For Your Eyes Only. Sadly only four stories were in existence at the time, and two were published posthumously as Octopussy & The Living Daylights. Subsequent editions added first The Property Of A Lady and finally 007 in New York (a minor puff piece written almost as an apology for a scathing travel review of New York by Fleming).

In Octopussy Bond is sent to bring to justice a retired army officer who had killed to smuggle Nazi gold out of Austria after the war. It's a strange tale where Bond is a peripheral figure and an octopuss does indeed loom large in the story.

Confusingly some plot elements from The Property of A Lady were used in the film “Octopussy”, but the written story is very different from the Roger Moore vehicle. A tale of a KGB mole in the Service, a fabled jewelled sphere by Fabergé and a scheme to unmask the KGB's top man in London, this is a far cry from megalomaniacs wanting to take over the world. This is Bond as a nuts and bolts spy, hunting his quarry and doing the legwork. Harry Palmer would recognise him.

Finally there is The Living Daylights where Bond must use all his skills as a marksman against an enemy sniper to help an agent escape from East Berlin. It's a tense waiting game and again showcases a side of Bond we rarely see, the reluctant killer, the world weary spy.

So, while a minor set of Bond's these stories are an entertaining read and round out the Fleming ‘canon' nicely.

A slender collation of Bond short stories published in 1966, two years after Fleming had died. It comprises Octopussy, The Property of a Lady, The Living Daylights and 007 In New York. Viewers of the Bond movies will recognise two of the titles and a lot of the plot elements. The character of Hannes Oberhauser, an Austrian climbing and skiing instructor who acted like a father to Bond, is also introduced. Oberhauser features in the movie Spectre.

The stories themselves are enjoyable and are some of the better Bond tales. The plots are straightforward and the limited word count provides constraints around what Bond can get involved with. They are more like character studies. For example, Octopussy is a morality tale, with greed bringing repercussions years later to the main protagonist, Dexter Smythe (who seems to be modelled on Fleming himself).

In The Living Daylights Bond's thoughts on killing are examined once again, showing that although 007 did not like doing it, he considered that he must as part of his duty to complete an assignment. Once the mission is completed, with Bond deliberately not killing the assassin, there is an attitude of complacency and disobedience with Bond shrugging off his colleague's complaints about the incident.

So, a worthy final addition to the original Bond series. A quick, easy and recommended read.

Octopussy - I kind of liked this story, it's about an agent going bad and how it hits them after they go bad. Also seems to use the term pussy to mean a pet or something endearing, which when listening to it as an audiobook makes it a little awkward. Doesn't feature much of Bond, which might be why I like it ok.

Property of a lady - This is the usual Bond starter stuff where he gets called in to some swanky scene to spot the bad actor. The glamour is described in detail and Bond of course is debonair. Kind of a let down.

meh on the others too. not worth the characters to type it out.