The Man with the Golden Gun

The final Bond novel written by Fleming before his death, The Man With The Golden Gun is a kind of reset button for our favourite Secret Agent after the long Blofeld story arc that featured in previous novels.

Set for the majority in a place very familiar to Fleming, Jamaica, the story first starts with a brainwashed Bond trying to assassinate M. He fails of course and with the help of a few electroshock therapies, he's soon sent back out into the field to re-win his spurs. This time his quarry is the deadly gun for hire of the title, Scaramanga. But rather than a quick kill, Bond uncovers a more complicated plot and decides to insinuate himself into Scaramanga's network.

This short novel is not on a par with the peaks of OHMSS or Goldfinger. Tarnished by the casual racism that was Fleming's Achilles heel, the tale has a tawdry feel in places. Scaramanga is a thug, not the scheming mastermind that Bond has come up against previously. It reads like a rerun of other, better novels. We even get a cameo by Felix Leiter, Bond's ex-CIA buddy, and his old secretary Mary Goodnight. It feels like Fleming was trying to get Bond back to being the human weapon of the early novels, the cold killer, the heartless assassin.

But the whole thing, despite some tense scenes at the denouement, feels tired and over familiar. I don't know where Fleming would have taken Bond next. Perhaps he was tired of the character. In any case the next book, Colonel Sun, was written by Kingsley Amis (as Ian Fleming), before the character was handed over to journeymen writers like John Gardner in the 1980s.

So that's all of Fleming's Bond stories read. Some good, some so-so, but all worth a read if you are into spy fiction. It's kinda required.

The Man with the Golden Gun is the twelfth novel (and thirteenth book) of Ian Fleming's James Bond series. It was first published in 1965, eight months after the author's death. The novel is not as detailed or polished as the others in the series and reads like a rough draft. Much of the detail contained in the previous novels is missing. This was often added by Fleming in the second draft. Publishers Jonathan Cape passed the manuscript to Kingsley Amis for his thoughts and advice. His suggestions were not used.

Apart from the unfinished feel, there are other issues:

The reader can see the effects of the two Bond films released before the writing of the novel (Dr. No and From Russia with Love). For example, there is an increased number of gadgets used. One of these was the poison gun used in the scene of the attempted assassination of M.

Fleming's ideas don't seem to mesh. For example, there is a “Manchurian Candidate” start to the book, which is abandoned. ' Bond then goes on a Caribbean manhunt.

Bond's character is not developed any further than in the previous books. When given two opportunities to kill Scaramanga in cold blood, Bond cannot bring himself to do it. This simply reiterates the morals of Bond as a British fictional hero. Bond also refuses later honours and reflects on his own name, “a quiet, dull, anonymous name”, which had been Fleming's aim when he first named the character.

The touches of humour displayed by Bond in previous novels have gone. Here Bond is cold and emotionless. He plods through the situations and story.

Scaramanga, the villain of the book, isn't like the screen version. He is a darker version of Bond in the movie, but just as skilled. In the book he is a henchman. The other bad guys are all wooden too. No one comes close to equalling Bond.

Apart from the reasonable finale ‘The Man with the Golden Gun' is missing a vital spark. If Fleming had finished the book then it shows he'd lost interest in the character. If he hadn't then Jonathan Cape should have let Kingsley Amis complete it.