Chefs don't have time to write. While I was working on Smoke and Pickles, I was running a restaurant — a daily regimen of testing recipes,...
Continue »
My fear upon opening Devil May Care was that it would just be a book version of a James Bond movie. Now, I like a good Bond flick as much as the next person, but I've waited years for someone to successfully pick up the mantle of Ian Fleming. Along comes Sebastian Faulks to satisfy that craving. Devil May Care picks up right after Octopussy, successfully reviving one of literature's most captivating heroes. True, it's not exactly Fleming, but the character is dead-on, the writing crisp, and you can't beat Bond as an escape from your day-to-day drudgery! Recommended by Lynn, Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
Bond is back in this electrifying new novel of intrigue and suspense.
A masterful continuation of the James Bond legacy, Devil May Care picks up right where Ian Fleming left off — at the height of the Cold War, with a story of almost unbearable tension. An Algerian drug runner is brutally executed on the desolate outskirts of Paris and Bond is assigned a new task — to shadow the mysterious Dr. Julius Gorner, a power-crazed pharmaceutical magnate. Gorner has lately taken a disquieting interest in opiate derivatives, both legal and illegal. After finding a willing accomplice in the shape of a glamorous Parisian named Scarlett Papava, Bond rushes to stop a chain of events that threaten to lead to global catastrophe.
Review:
Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, was born on May 28, 1908, 100 years ago today. In 1964, at the age of 56, having completed 12 Bond novels, he died of a heart attack, one apparently hastened by his fondness for the cocktails and cigarettes he wrote of with such affection. Despite Fleming's death, more than 20 additional Bond novels, authorized by his estate, have appeared, written by John Gardner,... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) Raymond Benson and (once) Kingsley Amis. Now, to mark Fleming's centenary, we have yet another Bond adventure, this one by the English novelist Sebastian Faulks, best known for his 1993 best-seller "Birdsong." I was never a great fan of the Bond books. I read a few of them (and saw a few of the early Bond movies) in the 1960s and thought them harmless fun, if a male fantasy of seducing gorgeous babes and defeating fiendish villains was what you wanted. As it happened, a vast audience wanted just that. Better spy novelists have come along — John le Carre, Robert Littell, Charles McCarry and Alan Furst among them — but none has approached the success of Fleming and his designated successors. Highlights of the Bond novels have entered popular culture: 007 and SMERSH, Miss Moneypenny and Pussy Galore, Goldfinger and Dr. No, "shaken, not stirred" and "Bond, James Bond." With more than 100 million books sold over 55 years, Bond is the most enduring fictional character since Sherlock Holmes. Like all the Bond novels, "Devil May Care" features, along with its heroic secret agent, two other essential figures: The Villain and The Girl. The former is Dr. Julius Gorner, said by Bond's boss, M, to be "potentially the most dangerous man the Service has yet encountered." Gorner, a Lithuanian, has a rare deformity: His left hand is "completely that of an ape. With hair up to the wrist and beyond." When this unfortunate fellow attended Oxford after World War II, other students laughed at his monkey's paw, as they called it. This led him to hate England so obsessively that by the mid-1960s, when the novel takes place, he had devised not one but two plans to destroy it. First, having become the world's foremost drug czar, he will flood England with heroin: "I think I can change most of your cities into drug slums by the end of the century." But impatient for his revenge, he hatches a more immediate scheme: to fake an English attack on a Soviet nuclear facility that will cause the Soviets to nuke London. "Tomorrow I shall launch an attack that will finally bring Britain to its knees," he pronounces. Bond's job, of course, is to stop this Anglophobic monster. His efforts are complicated by the arrival of a mysterious beauty called Scarlett Papava, whose long, elegant legs and other physical charms are described breathlessly. Scarlett, claiming that her sister is in Gorner's clutches, joins Bond's search for the hairy-handed villain. Thanks to some highly improbable plotting, both are soon Gorner's prisoners. ("Looks like a trap," Bond declares, as he walks into one.) Their captor takes them, bound and helpless, to his fortress in the Persian desert and shows them the huge drug factory where hundreds of heroin addicts toil as his slaves. ("They work twelve hours a day in return for water, rice and heroin.") The villain taunts Bond by forcing Scarlett to parade naked before the workers and announcing his intention to donate her to them. The scene manages to be both dumb and offensive. Of course, if you think Bond is going to let this good woman be raped by several hundred crazed heroin addicts, you're as dumb as the scene is. The essence of the Bond novels is for the hero to blunder into hopeless situations and then miraculously escape them. He does that here, repeatedly, as the action moves among London, Rome, Tehran, Moscow and Paris. Bond is shot at by men on motorcycles, nearly drowns twice, is beaten like a gong by various thugs and becomes embroiled in a bloody gun battle on a plane headed for Russia that's loaded with nuclear weapons. Stirring stuff, but we know that Agent 007 will survive for another sequel, perhaps forever. Between fights, chases and shootouts, and a slow-paced romance with long-legged Scarlett, Bond indulges in the brand-name snobbery that has awed us common folk for more than half a century. He smokes Chesterfields and cigarettes ordered from Turkey; he drinks Johnnie Walker Black and other expensive whiskeys, admires Chateau Batailley 1958 and finds all soft drinks "more or less repellent." He dislikes croissants and diplomats, loves good marmalade, carries a Walther PPK, drives a Bentley Continental with an Arnott supercharger and brings Miss Moneypenny boxes of Perugina Baci chocolates from Rome. We're advised that good caviar "should smell of the sea but never the fish" and, in the best "shaken, not stirred" tradition, that black pepper should be "cracked, not ground." All this social and culinary guidance seemed more urgent to me in my youth than it does today. For me at least, the Bond fantasy has not aged well. Faulks has said he intended to write a "lighthearted" novel, and "Devil May Care" has its amusing and entertaining moments, but there were other moments when I thought it would never end. My advice is to invest your $25 in a good bottle of wine and wait for the movie. Reviewed by Patrick Anderson, whose e-mail address is mondaythrillers(at symbol)aol.com, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group) (hide most of this review)
Review:
"[A] smart and enjoyable act of literary resurrection. Among the now 33 post-Fleming Bonds, this must surely compete with Kingsley Amis's for the title of the best." The Guardian (U.K.)
Review:
"[I]njects new life into the formula....Devil May Care is in many ways a stronger novel than any that Fleming wrote, both because it's better written and because it has all the Bond lore to draw upon. It's a satisfying thriller in its own right..." Charles McGrath, The New York Times Book Review
Review:
"[A] near-effortless read, and considerable fun....Faulks' writing is fine....But, unlike Fleming at his best, he doesn't quite elevate the boyish material above the bar of dignified nonsense. (Grade: B)" Entertainment Weekly
Review:
"On the whole...it is a book Fleming fans will enjoy — provided they don't take it too seriously....Faulks has clearly worked hard to emulate the master's distinctive, journalistic style." The BBC News
Review:
"Though Devil May Care is no literary landmark...it comes commendably close to the original and, provided you know what to expect, provides some real, retro pleasure." The Dallas Morning News
Review:
"Well-written [and] entertaining....The tension ratchets up." The Wall Street Journal
Synopsis:
James Bond is back. By invitation of the Fleming estate to mark the centenary of the Bond creator's birth, acclaimed novelist Faulks picks up where Fleming left off, writing a tour de force to electrify Bond fans everywhere.
Synopsis:
A masterful continuation of the James Bond legacy, Devil May Care picks up right where Ian Fleming left off — at the height of the Cold War, with a story of almost unbearable tension.
Sebastian Faulks's seven previous novels include the international bestseller Birdsong (1993), Charlotte Gray (2000), and most recently Engelby (2007). He lives in London, is married and has two sons and a daughter.
Product details
304 pages
Vintage Books USA -
English9780307387875
Reviews:
"Staff Pick"
by Lynn,
My fear upon opening Devil May Care was that it would just be a book version of a James Bond movie. Now, I like a good Bond flick as much as the next person, but I've waited years for someone to successfully pick up the mantle of Ian Fleming. Along comes Sebastian Faulks to satisfy that craving. Devil May Care picks up right after Octopussy, successfully reviving one of literature's most captivating heroes. True, it's not exactly Fleming, but the character is dead-on, the writing crisp, and you can't beat Bond as an escape from your day-to-day drudgery!
by Lynn
"Review"
by The Guardian (U.K.),
"[A] smart and enjoyable act of literary resurrection. Among the now 33 post-Fleming Bonds, this must surely compete with Kingsley Amis's for the title of the best."
"Review"
by Charles McGrath, The New York Times Book Review,
"[I]njects new life into the formula....Devil May Care is in many ways a stronger novel than any that Fleming wrote, both because it's better written and because it has all the Bond lore to draw upon. It's a satisfying thriller in its own right..."
"Review"
by Entertainment Weekly,
"[A] near-effortless read, and considerable fun....Faulks' writing is fine....But, unlike Fleming at his best, he doesn't quite elevate the boyish material above the bar of dignified nonsense. (Grade: B)"
"Review"
by The BBC News,
"On the whole...it is a book Fleming fans will enjoy — provided they don't take it too seriously....Faulks has clearly worked hard to emulate the master's distinctive, journalistic style."
"Review"
by The Dallas Morning News,
"Though Devil May Care is no literary landmark...it comes commendably close to the original and, provided you know what to expect, provides some real, retro pleasure."
"Review"
by The Wall Street Journal,
"Well-written [and] entertaining....The tension ratchets up."
"Synopsis"
by Random House,
James Bond is back. By invitation of the Fleming estate to mark the centenary of the Bond creator's birth, acclaimed novelist Faulks picks up where Fleming left off, writing a tour de force to electrify Bond fans everywhere.
"Synopsis"
by Ingram,
A masterful continuation of the James Bond legacy, Devil May Care picks up right where Ian Fleming left off — at the height of the Cold War, with a story of almost unbearable tension.
Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.
