An unusual Bond novel because written in the first person voice of a woman. Perhaps more than any other Bond novel this is nothing like the film of the same name. Bond only comes into the narrative in the final act to save the heroine from a nasty fate at the hands of two viscious gangsters holed up in a run down motel in the Adirondacks. The suspense builds well and it's quite a page turner. Hitchcock always wanted to make a Bond film and this would have been the one for him to do, with its American setting, creeping claustrophobia and damsel in distress. This Penguin series has a cool (though racy) set of retro covers that draw on elements of the story. My copy came from the local IGA store in Kingaroy, Qld, so you never know what little treasures you'll find among the supermarket novels.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
The Spy Who Loved Me
An unusual Bond novel because written in the first person voice of a woman. Perhaps more than any other Bond novel this is nothing like the film of the same name. Bond only comes into the narrative in the final act to save the heroine from a nasty fate at the hands of two viscious gangsters holed up in a run down motel in the Adirondacks. The suspense builds well and it's quite a page turner. Hitchcock always wanted to make a Bond film and this would have been the one for him to do, with its American setting, creeping claustrophobia and damsel in distress. This Penguin series has a cool (though racy) set of retro covers that draw on elements of the story. My copy came from the local IGA store in Kingaroy, Qld, so you never know what little treasures you'll find among the supermarket novels.
It's interesting that apart from the title, none of this has anything to do with the 1977 Bond film of the same name, which is one of the few decent ones that Roger Moore did, in my view.
ReplyDeleteYes that point is made in the introduction to the book. It's quite different in tone to any Bond film I've seen, and different also from any other Bond novel I've read. There is however a bad guy with metal teeth, not quite "Jaws" biting cables in two but the germ of the idea at least.
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