Still on Her Majesty’s Secret Service

Given the hype that surrounded the recent debut of British novelist Sebastian Faulks’ James Bond novel, Devil May Care, it should come as no surprise to anyone that it’s received widespread critical scrutiny. The latest to weigh in is January Magazine contributing editor Tony Buchsbaum, who writes today:

Faulks has crafted a crisp locomotive of a thriller, a master class not so much in how to emulate another author but how to strip away everything from a complex story except the relatively few details that make its heart beat. I wonder, post-read, if Devil May Care were an actual person, would it survive the rigors of its own heart--ever anxious, tightly plotted and populated with violent, sometimes merciless characters?

Devil May Care is a terrific resurrection. Ignoring the last, oh, 43 years, the novel picks up, more or less, a short while after the action of Fleming’s final 007 novel, The Man with the Golden Gun (1965). Not only do the movies not exist, but neither do the couple of dozen novels written by Kingsley Amis (using the name Robert Markham), John Gardner and Raymond Benson, each of which pitted Bond against villains large and threatening, in time zones both in the near and far distance. Here, Faulks doesn’t bother with any of that because it’s simply not in this universe. Instead, he provides any number of nods, both subtle and blatant, to Fleming’s works, mentioning names and places and brands that the average Bond aficionado will recognize with love. I’m tempted to say this is Faulks’ way of placing this Bond--his Bond--in proper context with Fleming’s. But then I go back to that dust jacket conceit: “writing as Ian Fleming.” This isn’t Faulks’ Bond, we’re meant to think, but Fleming’s.

You’ll find his full review here.