Enough cod-sociology and on with the action.
The only thing to commend the movie version of Live and Let Die above the novel is the theme song. The novel is more gritty, more ambitious, more realistic, more gripping, better executed and more authentic by far. It benefits from Fleming's increasing realisation of his own strength as a thriller writer and relative weakness as a teller of romantic tales- there is a lull when he has a bash at eulogising about his beloved Jamaican islands and one particularly shocking piece of prose will live long in the memory for all the wrong reasons ("The whole scene was macabre and livid, as if El Greco had done a painting by moonlight of an exhumed graveyard in a burning town")- but overall this a taut, pacy thriller.
Being a Bond novel, the premise is, of course, fantastical. A Soviet-trained American crime boss controls the whole of black America by masquerading as the zombie of a voodoo demon and is funding his commie-infiltration operations using a haul of buried pirate's treasure from the seventeenth century. But the execution of the plot is efficient and realistic. Bond blunders in thoughtlessly, makes mistakes, puts his friend Leiter and the crimelord's sweet and innocent concubine in mortal danger but by being tough and resolute and risking everything for the greater good saves the day and gets the girl. It's also interesting to note that the Bond of the novels relies heavily on the amphetimine benzedrine when he is called into action and also foregoes cigarettes and alcohol as he trains himself for the assault on the centre of the crimelord's operations. I never knew he was human! Either way he finds it impossible to make love with a broken little finger and I like to think I have one up on him there.
Anyway, the book moves at pace from London to Harlem to Florida and finally to the Caribbean with Bond leaving behind a trail of bodies (five, not counting the final scene) that cause a stink with the US authorities. He gets involved with Solitaire (an unconvincing distraction when he keeps his feelings "in a compartment which had no communicating door with his professional life") and then sees her recaptured by Mr Big who then keeps her alive to no great purpose other than to join Bond in what Dr Evil once called "an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death"- it's not quite that bad, to be honest. Bond eats well, very well and regularly. Fleming must have been on a diet when he wrote this because his discussion of Bond's meals probably takes more space in the novel than dialogue! Leiter suffers an agonising near-death experience (replicated in the very underrated movie Licence To Kill) leaving him with half an arm and one and a half legs missing.
It's an entertaining read. More intense than Casino Royale was, as if Fleming has really got the hang of it now. Moonraker next, I suspect that this too will be different from the movie. I bloody hope so anyway!
