posted on 01 Jun 2023

The Man with the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming

When you’ve never read single word written by a writer who has become an iconic figure, what you pick up and where it falls in their career is an important variable in how you respond to what you have in front of you. I know this well but I still chose to ignore this hard-earned lesson when it came to selecting one of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. I suppose it might have been the influence of the monstrously inflated film franchise that befuddled me but confronted with a clutch of immediately recognisable titles in a bundle of vintage paperbacks, I foolishly assumed the quality would be much of a muchness.The Man with the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming

I grabbed The Man with the Golden Gun and it seems I was wrong in my assumption.

I want to say from the outset that I thought, what I later discovered was Fleming’s last novel, was poorly written tripe. This should give any outraged Bond fanatics the chance to stop reading this and go and do something more useful than reading on and getting irritable and tetchy over the fact that I found the book so awful. In mitigation, on Fleming’s behalf, I have to acknowledge that he did write this while clearly unwell and died before he could go back and redraft as he intended. I’m not sure, however, that excuses the decision to publish what is by any standard a half-baked plot, some terrible dialogue and a plot almost devoid of thrills. A thriller without thrills is always going to be a limp affair.

The Man with the Golden Gun follows on from the preceding novel, You Only Live Twice and we join Bond as he has resurfaced in London after a mysterious absence from the scene, during which time some thought him dead. When he finally convinces the powers that be in the Secret Service that he’s who he claims to be, in a meeting with his boss, M, Bond tries to kill him. It turns out that his lengthy absence was because the Russians had got hold of him and had brainwashed him.

His attempt on M is unsuccessful and he’s de-brainwashed (if such a term exists) and is sent off to confront the current bête noir, Francisco ‘Pistols’ Scaramanga – a man who gets his nickname from his penchant for golden guns and killing British spies. Bond finds Scaramanga in Jamaica and worms his way into his inner circle, discovering that the killer is masterminding a plot to destabilize the world price of sugar and do some drug running and prostitution on the side. Bond is, of course, rumbled and his identity revealed, precipitating the ‘dramatic’ denouement – which, of course I wont reveal here but which you can almost certainly take a good guess at.

I’m entirely open to the idea that the first Bond novel I happened to choose to read was a bit of a turkey and not representative of the other books. It’s also true that I’m as much to blame for not doing a bit of basic research and taking the time to discover where I’d be best off starting. Others in the Bond series are generally held to be Fleming in his pomp -  Casino Royale, Goldfinger, Moonraker and From Russia With Love seem to be the cream of the crop – and maybe I’ll head there at some point. But at the moment I feel I’ve had my confidence in Fleming shaken and it might take a while before and it may take a while until I’m stirred into picking up another.

There are, needless to say, loads of paperback versions available at very low prices if you really want to waste time reading a copy.

 

Terry Potter

June 2023