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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN num: 9780385524285
ISBN number: 0385524285
Label: Doubleday
Manufacturer: Doubleday
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 304
Printing Date: May 28, 2008
Publishing house: Doubleday
Release Date: May 28, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 1241
Studio: Doubleday
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10 THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT JAMES BOND & IAN FLEMING
A Quiz
Q: Although James Bond is regarded by many as the quintessential English hero, he is actually not English. What is his nationality in the books?
A: He is half Scottish and half Swiss. He also hates that most English of drinks, tea--and describes it as 'mud'! Q: Bond has had many famous incarnations on the big screen but, prior to these, he was very first played on the radio by which British actor and game show host?
A: Bob Holness of Blockbusters fame Q: Which Bond villain shares a birthday with his creator?
A: Ernst Stavro Blofeld. On Her Majesty's Secret Service reveals that Blofeld was born on 28 May 1908. Ian Lancaster Fleming entered the world on the same day at 7 Green Street in London. Q: Which American President was a big fan of the Fleming novels?
A: President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy was known to be a big fan of Fleming and listed From Russia With Love as one of his top 10 favourite books. Bizarrely, both Kennedy and his assassin Lee Harvey Oswald are believed to have been reading Bond novels the night before Kennedy was killed. Q: Which famed children's author helped Ian Fleming adapt his children's adventure story Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the big screen?
A: Roald Dahl Q: Where did Fleming write all his Bond books?
A: At Goldeneye, his Jamaican home. Although now part of a luxurious holiday resort, the house was very basic in Fleming's time--so much so that his friend and neighbour Noel Coward referred to it as Goldeneye, Nose and Throat! Q: Although Ursula Andress wears the most famous bikini in cinema history in her iconic performance in Doctor No, in Fleming's novel of the same name the character Honeychile Rider wears even less. What does she wear?
A: She is naked save for a knife-belt. Q: The very first Bond novel, Casino Royale, originally had a different title when it was published in the US. Under what title was it initially published here?
A: The initial title here was Too Hot To Handle. Q: What is James Bond's favorite meal?
A: Breakfast. He has a particular penchant for scrambled eggs, and the short story 007 in New York even includes his own recipe for them. Q: Who is Miss Moneypenny named for?
A: Miss Moneypenny was named after a character in an unpublished novel written by Ian Fleming's brother, the travel writer Peter Fleming.
Product Description:
Bond is back. With a vengeance.
Devil May Care is a masterful continuation of the James Bond legacy–an electrifying new chapter in the life of the most iconic spy of literature and film, written to celebrate the centenary of Ian Fleming’s birth on May 28, 1908.
An Algerian drug runner is savagely executed in the desolate outskirts of Paris. This seemingly isolated event leads to the recall of Agent 007 from his sabbatical in Rome and his return to the world of intrigue and danger where he is most at home. The head of MI6, M, assigns him to shadow the mysterious Dr. Julius Gorner, a power-crazed pharmaceutical magnate, whose wealth is exceeded only by his greed. Gorner has lately taken a disquieting interest in opiate derivatives, both legal and illegal, and this urgently bears looking into.
Bond finds a willing accomplice in the shape of a glamorous Parisian named Scarlett Papava. He will need her help in a life-and-death struggle with his most dangerous adversary yet, as a chain of events threaten to lead to global catastrophe. A British airliner goes missing over Iraq. The thunder of a coming war echoes in the Middle East. And a tide of lethal narcotics threatens to engulf a Great Britain in the throes of the social upheavals of the late sixties.
Picking up where Fleming left off, Sebastian Faulks takes Bond back to the height of the Cold War in a story of almost unbearable pace and tension. Devil May Care not only captures the very essence of Fleming’s original novels but also shows Bond facing dangers with a powerful relevance to our own times.
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Rated by buyers 
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I'm only on page seven, and I'm already irritated with Faulke's constant usage of French terminology in the narrative. I'm familiar with common French expressions, but this is over the top. And a car squeals its tires pulling away from the curb--on a rainy night? Come on! Furthermore, although we know where we are, we don't know WHEN we are at this point. I can only hope that it improves, because I am not a happy reader.
Rated by buyers 
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Sebastian Faulks proves a better interpreter of James Bond and the style of his creator Ian Fleming than anything I've read before -- Kingsley Amis's "Colonel Sun" and several (though not all) of the John Gardner books -- but that's not saying that much. Faulks provides a few bullseye highlights that emulate Fleming's style close to perfectly -- a high-stakes tennis match, an increasingly desperate underwater exploration, a shootout on a plane, some successful asides of sly humour -- but Bond lacks his cutthroat testosterone with both the ladies and a couple bad guys that takes the edge off the character, and the tagalong girlfriend becomes incrementally more annoying. The book works in fits and starts, but disappoints overall because in sections it gleams with promise of what it could have been.
Rated by buyers -
Faulks picks up the mantle of the master Ian Fleming in the late 1960's with Bond recalled from sabbatical to snuff out the drug-peddling efforts of an Anglophobe operating out of Iran. There is a lot of 20/20 hindsight at work here - the rise of drugs as the great menace of the western world in the late 20th century, the mounting political and military failure of the US in Vietnam, the Cold War as a grey ops gun and drug bazaar - and Bond himself takes on a sort of a 21st-century man quality that Fleming's agent never seemed to possess.
Faulks retains much of the cocksure bravado and acquisitive elegance of the Bond more familiar to movie viewers than Fleming readers; but, for my money, this is the most introspective and sensitive Bond we've seen perhaps since Fleming debuted the character in "Casino Royale."
"Devil May Care" is populated by the usual menagerie of villains: including a Laotian child-torturing sidekick with no sense of pain thanks to experimental Soviet brain surgery; and - with no apparent sense of the irony - a drug running Eastern European billionaire with a unique birth defect as his physical and egotistical weakness (ah, if only those same Soviet surgeons that performed the free brain perforation could have devised some way to alleviate a billionaire's cursed monkey hand).
The "Bond girl" is Scarlett, a young beauty shrouded in mystery and with a new "secret" seemingly revealed every chapter. The relationship with Bond was as expected; but, my real criticism of Faulks would be in the Scarlett story. None of the big reveals really pay off and most of them are carried out ham-handedly with unsurprising - if not obvious - conclusions.
Still, for summer reading with a familiar friend, I think Devil May Care is worth a look. It takes the frequent espionage reader into an unfamiliar place with a center of gravity outside of "Langley," and a setting in a time before every story can hinge on some critical technological advantage. In that sense it is more like a Le Carre or Higgins than the stuff you find in heavy rotation these days at the grocery checkout, in Walmart and in the airport bookstores.
JAW
Rated by buyers 
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The literary 007 finally makes a return for the very first time since Raymond Benson's exit with the novel The Man With The Red Tattoo back in 2002. With a new author, not known for thriller writing, taking the reigns there was much hope for Devil May Care. So what is the verdict on the new 007 adventure?
Well it is not a perfect book by any means though and I won't claim it as such. Author Sebastian Faulks tries too hard at times to make his style Fleming's style and the plot seems to be taken from some unmade Roger Moore script. That said I feel there are things that Faulks does get right.
Faulks biggest strength in the novel is his characters. To begin with, he seems to have a good idea of the Bond character and while it might not be 100% Fleming's, it feels more like the character then previous continuation authors had in their very first Bond novels. The villain, Dr. Julius Gorner, has some interesting echoes of some of Fleming's best villains (Drax, Dr. No) though there are moments when he is nothing more then a two-dimensional villain. The girls in the story, Poppy and Scarlet, make for an interesting twist on the usual Bond girl especially at the conclusion.
Faulks also makes good use of some other Fleming characters. In particular he uses Felix Leiter, M, Tanner, and Moneypenny. They are a near perfect example of a good use of continuity that doesn't feel forced. There are also some nice bits of travelogue that seem somewhat reminiscent of Fleming, one of the Fleming style aspects that Faulks does get right.
As I said it's not perfect, nor does it really claim it to be. It is an enjoyable continuation of the Fleming books and (at times) feels like one. Sadly, Faulks tries too hard to copy Fleming in style with a Roger Moore film plot. Otherwise, Devil May Care is on par with the better John Gardner and Raymond Benson books in terms of quality. Bond fans should find plenty to enjoy in it.
Rated by buyers 
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I have been a Bond fan since I can remember, watching the movies, and reading the Fleming books from the time I was 8 years old. I felt this was much better than some of the more recent and more modern approaches to Bond. I really enjoyed this book, great job, wish Faulks would keep them coming. Great summer read if you like Bond.
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