"It just occurred to me that life's too short"











Thunderball
By
Ian Fleming
Penguin Modern Classics, 2006

I should really have moved onto Dr. No but I read that a few years ago. This sadly means skipping the nice bit of continuity where we see Bond having recovered from his bout of Rosa Klebb-induced poison and the ending of his relationship with Tatiana (incredibly, they seem to have actually tried to make a go of it). So Thunderball it is.

One of the supposed disadvantages of having seen (and become familiar with) the Bond movies before reading the books - that the stories are wildly different - can actually be an advantage. This book's plot is similar to the eventual movie but with some crucial differences, so I was never a hundred percent sure as to how the ending, or some of the relationships between characters, would play out. This meant for lots of superb tension as it races towards its climax after the typically Fleming bit of slightly anxious (for Bond) 'waiting around' time - like torture, it softens up the reader before suddenly going in for the kill.

An interesting difference is Blofeld. He is introduced in this novel, along with his organisation of SPECTRE. He is nowhere near being the camp affectation-riddled mastermind of the movies, nor even the overblown semi-disfigured caricature of previous literary Bond villains. Instead he is a Mussolini-like and very clever head of a well-honed organisation who likes to deal with things in a very no-nonsense manner yet is capable of inspiring (apparently genuine) admiration from his employees. The nearest thing to an affectation is his sucking on breath-mints. His plan is so well crafted a part of you almost wishes it to succeed.

We also have a bizarre section where Bond, feeling invigorated after his enforced time at a health spa (where he very conveniently happens upon one of the agents of SPECTRE), actually starts to enjoy the sort of dreary paperwork he has previously spent whole chapters criticising. Thankfully this health kick vanishes the second he is put on a job by M, meaning he can get back to being (as per his official medical report) a sixty cigarettes a day man.

Thunderball is as colourful as you could want, with assassinations aplenty, Bond enjoying some eerie Live And Let Die-esque journeys along the sea bed, the suave secondary villain Emilio Largo (as charismatic as Klebb was repulsive) and the challenge of Bond's romancing of Domino - she survives some grisly torture at Largo's hands and lives to finally be swept up into Bond's arms. It's odd how Fleming takes you up to an actual sex scene without ever spelling it out. He presumably knew his market, and the censors, too well to give us a blow-by-blow account (as it were).

Blofeld returns in two more novels but apparently the next one, The Spy Who Loved Me, is SPECTRE-less, and rather atypical. I'll post here my thoughts when I read that one.

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