Carte Blanche by Jeffrey Deaver

"It's twenty-first century imperialism. People used to exploit Africa for diamonds and slaves. Now it's exploited for its ability to purge the guilt of wealthy Westerners."

First published May, 2011.

In his review of the book for 007 Magazine, Luke Williams writes: 

"(Carte Blanche) is a relatively entertaining thriller that blends generic elements of Deaver and Fleming into a readable but resolutely unmemorable 432 pages. As such it’s a typical example of modern 'franchise' fiction." 

Ludovic Hunter-Tilney, pop critic for Financial Times adds:

"The novel depicts an unconvicing Bond. The problem partly lies in Deaver's writing style, which its bizarrely clunky moments, like the description of a baddie 'who stood still as a Japanese fighting fish.' But (it) also faces two deeper difficulties:
 

One is the diminished stature of modern-day espionage following MI6 and the CIA's disastrous attempts to convince the world of Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Tellingly, Carte Blanche avoids mentioning Iraq (Bond's back story has him fighting in Afghanistan instead) and it shifts his spy career from MI6 to a shadowy security service called the Overseas Development Group. Fleming's cold war setting is a distant glamorous memory.

The other problem is finding a way to modernize Bond while staying true to the characteristics that animated him so vividly in Fleming's books. The original Bond has a 'brutal and ironical' face; he is a sensualist through whom Fleming expressed a decadent, even kinky worldview, ripe with sadomasochism and sexualized violence (...) Sanitize this side of 007 and you're left with Deaver's Bond, 'a man of serious face and hunter's demeanor,' a killing machine who talks of 'target vectors' and 'shooting scenarios'." 

I concede that both reviewers are essentially (or at least arguably) correct in their points, yet... I enjoyed Carte Blanche. Quite a bit. Am I too forgiving? Not discerning enough?

As Deaver is not "writing as Ian Fleming" (as was the case in Devil May Care and why I objected to that book's un-Fleming-ness) and as this book does not take place in the Fleming-verse, Gardner-verse, Benson-verse, or the Eon-verse, I wasn't bothered by any of that. Does the marked difference between Daniel Craig's Bond - the other hard-reboot of the franchise(s) - and Connery's or Moore's or whomever's Bond make Casino Royale deficient? Sure it's got the Fleming source material, there, so it's not a perfect one-to-one. I think it's wholly worthwhile to determine what is or isn't "Bond" and compare accordingly, but there's enough of the traditional Bond in Carte Blanche, at least in my eyes, to justify itself.

Deaver's Bond is really just a 21st century version of Gardner's Bond, with some tweaks of his own (such as the subplot with Bond's parents, which I quite enjoyed.) There's even improbable (though not Gardner-level improbable) double/triple agents. I have more sympathy for the modern-franchise-fiction criticism, but that to me is more a comment on the publishing industry than the Bond one.

(That "Japanese fighting fish" simile, by the by, really seemed to ruffle feathers - I saw that mentioned in a few different reviews. I don't see the fuss, myself.)

  
Let's get to the book itself.

The Plot: Bond, a thirtysomething Royal Naval Reserve officer currently employed by the Overseas Development Group (an organization under the control of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office but with considerable latitude to protect the realm by any means necessary) is tasked to first discover the truth behind "Incident 20," an upcoming terrorist event of some kind, and then stop it. With the help of Q Branch and Ophelia "Philly" Maidenstone, MI6's liaison officer to the ODG, as well as some familiar faces (Felix Leiter) and the South African Police Service (SAPS), he uncovers a link between the planned incident and rag and bone tycoon Severan Hydt and his Northern Irish henchman/master planner Niall Dunne. Following the trail of clues from the Middle East to the Cape of Good Hope, Bond infiltrates Hydt's "Green Way" organization to try and stop the attack before it's too late.

Bond: Okay, so as mentioned above, I have no objection to writing Bond a different way, or depriving him of his more traditional idiosyncrasies, but he is a bit generic here. I saw him referred to as "James Bourne" somewhere, but that doesn't seem right to me either. He didn't remind me of Jason Bourne, or Jack Bauer, or any franchise spy, really - maybe that was the problem. Deaver's Bond is a perfectly reasonable, efficient spy, but I don't know how many books featuring this version of Bond I'd read. I like Deaver's style, which I'll get to in a bit, but not necessarily his Bond. 

Although he did make several attempts to characterize him with a little of the ol' Fleming malaise and snobbery:

"Bond wasn't impressed by the Lodge Club. Perhaps back in the day, when it was the enclave of hunters in jodhpurs and jackets embellished with loops to hold ammunition for their big-five game rifles, it had been more posh, but the atmosphere now was that of a suburban banquet hall hosting simultaneous marriage fetes. Bond wasn't even sure if the Cape buffalo head, staring down at him with a studious glare from near the front door, was real or had been manufactured in China." 

The Villains: Here I thought Deaver did a good job. Niall is a realistic foil for Bond, even if he's somewhat improbably said to be motivated by unrequited feelings for both Severan and Felicity Willing. (More on her in a moment.) Mainly, it was just nice to see an Ulster man who wasn't saying "Boyo" every other minute, as is all too often the unfortunate case with Yank genre writers.

I quite enjoyed Severan, whose love of decay and rubbish is an extension of his necrophilia. He's a traditional Bond villain - wealthy, sexually unconventional, with a physical deformity (his long, yellow nails) - but not given to cartoony speeches. I like my Bond villain cartoony speeches if they're done right, don't get me wrong, but the way both Dunne and Hydt were written fit the tone of Carte Blanche pretty well. The "Death in the Sand" / Liwa Oasis sequence - and the run-up to it, with the mistaken intel - was great.

Felicity Willing, leader of the International Organization Against Hunger, is the novel's surprise-villain. I appreciate that the villains are heads of famine-relief and recycling organizations. I'm of the opinion that greater evil is accomplished via not-for-profit front organizations than anything else. Which isn't to say all nonprofits are evil, only that people's naivety is (ongoingly) manipulated and exploited by evil people. Not just their naivety: please refer to the quote I started this entry off with.

There's also Mahdi al-Fulan, who designs gadgetry and equipment for Hydt. When Bond sees his factory and showroom in Abu Dhabi, he remarks to himself: "If robots had pleasant dreams, they would be set in this room."

The Ladies and The Allies: Combined since the main love interest (unconsummated, shades of Moonraker) is both. The only Bond hook-up happens with Felicity - nice name, incidentally. There are quite a few here:

- M, obviously. Rather traditional take on M. I liked how he waved off Bond's assurance that he didn't screw up in Serbia (the "pre-credits sequence") despite the Serbians' claims that he did. M waves off the suggestion that any of his agents would be wrong, somewhat irritated.
"Explanation is a sign of weakness, 007."

- Felix Leiter. He shows up in Abu Dhabi (along with Yusuf Nasad, the CIA's man in the sands. Kiss of death, that.) He doesn't really need to be here, but hey, it's Felix. I was amused that Bond (of course) had to save him.

- The SAPS crew. Primarily Bheka Jordan, the beautiful police captain with whom Bond flirts but finds no joy. She's written and characterized pretty well. Actually my favorite character of the whole book. Her underlings (Kwalen Nkosi and Sergeant Mbalula) are effectively sketched but more just scenery, at least until the very end.

- Gregory Lamb (MI6 man in South Africa) and Percy Osborne-Smith (Department 3 aka MI5 man foisted upon Bond, based in London). Both are somewhat stock characters, but they move their parts of the plot along well enough.

I thought it was Lamb who was wearing the Breitling (image nicked from here) but I was mistaken. This is Bond's watch in Carte Blanche.

- And Jessica Barnes, a late-innings (but pivotal) ally. Onetime beauty queen, now kept as a prized "decaying object" for Hydt. 

Gadgets: Very subdued - Bond accomplishes most of what he needs to do on his mobile, as modified by Q Branch, leading to its nickname as an I(Q)Phone. Har de har har. Q Branch comes off quite well, able to slip Bond things across the globe without setting up an entire shop in the middle of a pyramid or what not. (Not that I ever minded that in the movies - part of the fun.) Here Major Boothroyd is replaced by Sanu Hirani, an energetic and congenial young man with a fondness for cricket. 

I forget where, but one of the reviews I looked at mentioned how Bond mentions his Oakley sunglasses "every other page." Undoubtedly just an exaggeration for effect - they're mentioned by name only a couple of times - but I thought his using the Oakleys to capture a bloodied fingerprint was quick thinking. I also enjoyed the nod to how improved surveillance and computer tech has made the analog spycraft of "the cobwebbed past" advantageous. (Shades of the Moore/Eick Battlestar Galactica.)

Locations: Quite enjoyed the Abu Dhabi and South Africa sections. 

"The Lincoln eased through the haze and heat, paralleling the massive power lines conducting electricity to the outer regions of the city-state. Nearby was the Persian Gulf, the rich blue muted nearly to beige by the dust in the air and the glare of the low but unrelenting sun." 

The Writing: While I found Bond a little bland, I thought this was a page-turner. The plot, action, characterization, dialogue, all of it. Moved at a better clip than Solo, even though I liked Solo more overall. 

I thought the 007-Magazine's objections to one aspect of the prose - Deaver's "UK-ifying" his writing - silly:

"Although admirably accurate, they come across as a forced and heavy-handed attempt on the author’s part to prove that an American can master the British context and idiom, rather than acting as a seamless part of the narrative; so it is that we are subjected to a wealth of cricket and rugby references along with name-checks for, among others, Kate Winslet, the Harry Potter novels, Top Gear, Radio 2 and Radio 4, The Two Ronnies, Waitrose, The Times, The Guardian, I Claudius, Guy Ritchie and Boots the chemist!"

Could be just my American upbringing and all, but it didn't seem forced to me. And to refer to the rugby/cricket references as "a wealth" is an overstatement. Most of these things aren't even all that provincial to the UK: likening Mary Goodnight to Kate Winslet, for example  - she's known the world over. Ditto for most of these things. 

(Maybe not Boots the chemist. But who cares?)

The Kipling: 

"Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne / 

He travels the fastest who travels alone."

The Book Launch: As they did for Devil May Care, IFP went all out with an invitation-only affair with Royal Marine commandos, a tricked-out Bentley, and a stunt rider/ supermodel (Chesca Miles):

Nice to see such things. Must have been a trip for the author.

One last thing: the book's dedication reads "To the man who taught us we could still believe in heroes, Ian Fleming." That struck me as a little odd. Fleming certainly didn't teach me anything about heroes. But when I dug more into Deaver's background, I came across this:

"It was when I started to read the James Bond books that I realized that adventure stories could be brought into the present day and have an immediacy. I grew up in a small town in the mid-west of America, but nonetheless, Bond spoke to me. I found the books to be inspiring. They opened up my world."

A nice sentiment. I suppose I could say something similar about the Bond movies and my own childhood, but sorry, Bond, Marvel Comics got to me first.

All in all, a perfectly readable what-if sideroad of the main Bondverse. I'm not sure what the grand plan is over at IFP - more one-offs? An ongoing series set in a reboot-verse like this one? Something new altogether? Time will tell.

~

So ends my sojourn through the Bond books. (At least for now.) What was my favorite? Off the top of my head, probably Trigger Mortis. It's stuck with me, and I even pulled it off the shelf and ended up practically re-reading the whole thing a couple of weekends ago. But the Union Trilogy by Benson is also great stuff, and I loved Solo and Gardner's Nobody Lives Forever - all for different reasons. 

An enjoyable project, all around. To those who read along, my sincere thanks. Your comments definitely helped shape my perspective on these things.  

Solo by William Boyd

"It was like that old Chinese curse - 'May you live in interesting times' - reconfigured 

as 'May vast reserves of oil be discovered in your country.'"

First published September, 2013.

At various times while reading Solo, I felt it was: 

- the best John Gardner Bond ever. 
- the most mature Ian Fleming ever. 
- neither of those. 
- a Fleming with all the pulp sucked out of it. 
- a great book for someone not named James Bond. 
- maybe a great Bond book?
- lacking tension. 
- captivating. 
- over-structured. 
- subtle.
- too subtle.
- maybe just subtle enough?
- too perfect.
- not perfect enough.
- maybe perfect for a different character but not for Bond.
- maybe a different kind of perfect for Bond?

That's not a chronological account, mind you, i.e. I didn't start on Gardner and end on perfect. I haven't been pulled in so many different directions by a book in awhile. I'm still conflicted, actually. I apologize if this post is a bit all over the place as a result. To try and organize my impressions, I'll stick with the traditional Bond organizers this time around.

The Plot: After celebrating his 45th birthday alone at The Dorchester, Bond is sent to Zanzarim, a (fictional) African country besieged by civil war. The oil-rich south of the country has declared itself the Republic of Dahun, and its charismatic leader, Solomon Adeka, vows to hold out against the aggression of the north. Bond visits Adeka's estranged brother Gabriel, who runs a London-based charity firm, before departing.

In Zanzarim, Bond is escorted into Dahun by Blessing Olgivy-Grant, MI6 Head of Station (uh-oh) in the nascent republic. They are captured by Jakobus Breed and his ragtag band of Rhodesian mercenaries. After an ambush by Zanzarim forces, Bond wanders through the bush, seeing firsthand the starvation and misery of Dahun's civilians. An apologetic Breed, who assumed (correctly of course) that Bond's cover as a visiting French journalist was bogus, rescues Bond and escorts him to Janjaville, the Dahun capitol. There he meets the suspicious financier of Dahun's bid for independence, Hulbert Linck. He helps repel an enemy attack at the Battle of the Kololo Causeway and subsequently learns Adeka is dying from cancer. When Adeka succumbs to the disease, Bond considers his mission finished and (after kidnapping Tony Msour, the rebels' "juju man" aka witch doctor) attempts to escape the country. At the last moment, Breed and an apparently-alive/working-with-Breed Blessing waylay him and leave him for dead.

After convalescing, Bond wastes little time in "going solo," i.e. following Adeka's charity firm to its new base in the United States. In short order, he learns both Blessing and Breed work for the firm. Before he can follow through on his vengeance, he is visited by Brig Leiter - nephew of old pal Felix - and another CIA man Luke Massinette, of whom Bond is instantly suspicious. Turns out Blessing (real name Aleesha Belem) is working for Uncle Sam. Bond pretends to go home but launches a solo raid on the charity, brutally murdering Breed and uncovering a) a drug smuggling operation, and b) Solomon Adeka, alive but hooked on heroin, and Hulbert Linck. Linck kills Adeka, and when Brig and Luke arrive, Luke kills Linck.

Later, Bond and Felix have a few drinks in Janjaville and reflect cynically on both the number of oil companies in the country and the ethical rigors of their trade. 

Some thoughts:

- It's always nice to see Bond going "off-grid" on a mission of vengeance, but this is quite removed in spirit and pace from other Avenger Bond stories (License to Kill, etc.)

- Some nice structure in this one. At the beginning, Bond is beset by a dream of his WW2 service and how he was almost killed when his Sten gun jammed. He was saved by Tozer, the man who trained him in the doctrine of Disproportionate Response (i.e. the sort of speech Sean Connery gives Elliot Ness in The Untouchables. "He puts one of your men in the hospital, you put one of his in the morgue.") These dreams disappear after the first part of the book, but moments after he kills Breed, Tozer is brought up again. Nice touch. 

- Similarly, Bond's biggest problem at the beginning is whether or not to buy a Jensen Interceptor. His wavering on the subject (and his alcoholism) are by-products of the growing distance he feels towards his work. At the end, confronted with his part in being wielded as a blunt object by his government as a favor/ deal with the oil companies, his distance has hardened somewhat, but oddly enough, he's more at peace with himself. At least on the surface. Says BookBond (in a very thoughtful review): 

"Solo is also a hugely moody and internal book; a book that brings us back inside James Bond. Turns out that's a pretty dark place. Because the James Bond of Solo is an extremely Dark character. But not in the obvious commercialized "darkness" of a Batman (or even Skyfall). Bond is simply a man who is resigned to living a solitary, voyeuristic, and dangerous existence which, like a cancer, is eating away at his soul and will kill him one sunny day." 

Locations: London, Zanzarim, Washington DC. DC and London are effective enough and logical for the plot and all, but as mentioned here, DC is "effectively a political capital with a dirty 1960s’ underbelly (...) rather dull for the Bondiverse. At times we get glimpses of the more exotic aspects of late ’60s Americana (assertive black women in afros and flares and red Mustang sportscars), but these are fleeting."

Chelsea, London in the late 60s.

I particularly liked the evocation of immediately post-colonial Africa. Probably because of:

The Author: I've not read any other William Boyd, though I've heard good things about A Good Man in Africa and The Ice Cream War. He grew up in Nigeria and witnessed firsthand the Nigerian Civil War, which is the obvious real world basis for the Zanzarim/Dahun fictional conflict. Speaking at the London Book Fair, Boyd said "(Bond) goes on a real mission to real countries and the world he's in is absolutely 1969. (...) there is a very precise reason why I chose that year." While Biafra's capitulation was in 1970 and not 1969, I suspect (though he does not explicitly confirm this) that's the reason to which he alludes. Maybe that's the year he saw something similar to what Bond sees on his tortured journey to Janjaville. 

Should Boyd have simply placed Bond in Nigeria/ Biafra itself? I can see that being problematic. Maybe we should keep Bond out of real-world conflagrations. (Gardner placed him after-the-fact in the Falkland Islands affair. I actually wouldn't mind seeing a Bond-in-the-Falklands novel. But, probably an even more problematic idea than putting him in the Biafra War.)

All in all, I thought this was a superbly written book. But perhaps there is a lack of a certain Bond-something, as Michiko Kakutani wrote in her review of the book for the New York Times:

"Fans of James Bond movies aren’t likely to recognize the hero of this new James Bond novel. (It does not) feature a hero, who — aside from some pretty generic traits like an eye for the ladies, an ability to kill and an appreciation for expensive cars and a good meal — really feels like the Bond we have come to know over the last five decades. (...) He also seems oddly deficient in irony, style and dangerous competence — those essential Bond traits. Often, he comes across as more of a weary civil servant than one of Her Majesty’s licensed-to-kill agents.

"There is little of the original novels’ pulpy energy or the movies’ inventive fantasies here — not to mention less humor, and no glamour whatsoever."

I think these are fair charges - someone (I apologize for neglecting to grab the link) - refers to Boyd's Bond as more of a Graham Greene protagonist, and that seems about right. This might be what alternately kept me at a distance and pulled me in as I was reading, that sense that while a great book, Solo might be an odd-man-out of the other Bond books. 

Is this a bad thing? YMMV. I think, like Colonel Sun or the first few of Gardner's Bonds, it's an intelligent take on where Fleming's Bond might have been, mentally and emotionally, in the time period assigned.

"As for his clothing, Bond had bought a black leather blouson jacket with big patch pockets, a black polo-neck jersey, a black knitted three-hold balaclava and a length of nylon rope. He was going to wear his dark charcoal trousers from his suit tucked into his socks with a pair of black sneakers with thick rubber soles.

He smiled grimly to himself."

The Villains: I read more than a few reviews that knocked the book for its lack of proper Bond villains. I understand this reaction - Breed is an effective enough villain, with his ruthless stringing up of dead soldiers by hooks ("used to string up ZIPRA terrs at Matabeleland in '66, scares them senseless") and his face wound leaving a perpetual tear running down his face, and Linck is appropriately mastermindish (and wealthy) - but the real supervillains of the book are the captains of state and the oil companies with whom they're in bed. Is there any other Bond book that (subtly) likens such luminaries to Blofeld and SPECTRE? I like that.

The Ladies: I didn't know what purpose Bryce Fitzjohn - a B-film actress (Vampira, Queen of Darkness) that Bond meets in the first chapter - served until Bond meets her after he gets back from Janjaville and (after seducing her) steals her passport to use on his solo mission. I thought okay, that was an interesting way to set that up, but I hope he circles back to this. And he does, with Bond, after another night of romance, realizing it'll never work between them because he can't see her killed. He steals away in the night with the classic "It's not you it's me" note. (This is a neat bit of mirroring to an earlier scene.)

I imagined Ingrid Pitt playing her. Appropos for the time period, I think.

The other female protagonist is Efua Blessing Ogilvy-Grant aka Aleesha Belem. Turns out, she's not Head of Station in Zanzarim. But if you're thinking, oh good, she must survive then, so much death in the world... well. Not quite. Poor Blessing. (I open the floor to casting suggestions, but nobody who wouldn't have been the right age in 1969 please.) 

The Allies: Felix is handled well, as are Brig and even Luke, who gets the thankless CIA-assassin part. (A version of this story from his POV would be quite interesting.) Bond's housekeeper May is retired and replaced by her niece, Donalda, who gets a crack on the skull from unseen assailants for her troubles. And I liked his press buddy, Digby Breadalbane, perpetually low on funds.

James Bond's Salad Dressing: I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that we get a glimpse of Bond's personal mixture of salad dressing. Because who would leave themselves at the mercy of some hotel chef somewhere? Not only does Boyd show us his making it and all the ingredients in the right order, with Bond's commentary, there's a footnote (a la "007 in New York") with the recipe spelled out in traditional form.

Quite a good novel. I can understand where those who felt it lacked tension or wasn't a proper Bond novel are coming from, but I admire its structure and enjoyed a glimpse of Bond in Greene (as in Graham) pastures. 

"Dirty tricks were as old as history."