| Devil May Care | 
 enlarge | Author: Sebastian Faulks
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Category: Book
List Price: CDN$ 29.95
Buy New: CDN$ 18.87
You Save: CDN$ 11.08 (37%)
New (1) Used (5) from CDN$ 12.75
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 21684
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 304
ISBN: 0385665520
EAN: 9780385665520
ASIN: 0385665520
Publication Date: May 28, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 An enjoyable romp September 21, 2008
. Unlike the movies, the book is a continuation of the original series. Though the setting is the Middle East, the time is the Cold War. The plot involves a ridiculous flying machine similar to those seen in the original James Bond series with Sean Connery saving the Britain from almost certain annihilation Sebastien Faulks does an excellent job of recreating Flemings character while still giving it some life for readers who exist in a very different world from the 1960s.
 Classic Bond July 22, 2008
As an avid Bond movie fan, I decided to read my first Bond book by Fleming. Overall the book was exciting, suspenseful and full of the Bond signature moves, however; the style of writing tended to be somewhat simplistic and tedious. Once past this detail, the story was able to emerge and it was fantastic! Worth the read for sure.
"He seemed to be beyond reach, locked in a world where ordinary human concerns couldn't touch or weaken him." July 19, 2008
Written in the tradition of Ian Fleming, Sebastian Faulks delves deep into Fleming's iconic secret agent and the mythology that surrounds him, meditating on darker-than-usual themes that have implications for the way we live now. In Faulk's Cold War mid-1960's world, Bond has been ravaged at the hands of his enemies and temporarily pensioned off by M, his life at best a double-edged sword where no triumph is likely to be anything but short-lived.
When a Frenchman of Algerian birth is savagely murdered on the outskirts of Paris, Detective Inspector Mathis is mystified as to who could have caused such a violent act: the boy's tongue had been severed and a single bullet has been fired up through the roof of the mouth. When drugs are thought to be the likely cause of the crime, Mathis comes to the realization that there is something far bigger going on than just young dissolute youths peddling heroin,
Meanwhile, James, tired of the South of France, has on the invitation of Felix Leiter, his old friend from the CIA, come to Rome, where in the middle of St. Peters Square he meets an extraordinarily beautiful woman by the name of Larissa Rossi, ostensibly in Rome with her husband, a director of one of the large insurance companies, but whose presence fills James with a strange mixture of unease and passion: she reeks of "breeding, youth, and expensive hosiery."
Intent to enjoy his time with Larissa, James can't quite believe it when he is called out of sabbatical and back to London by a cigar smoking M, after all, this is a tired and worn-down James, fresh from his encounter with Auric Goldfinger and his plans to raid Fort Knox and obliterate the world economy. James is beginning to show his battles with evil, on his torso and arms there's a network of scars, small and large, that trace a history of his violent life: "Your tired James, Your played out, Finished."
But perhaps it is only James that can battle "the master-of-all-trades the psychopathic Dr. Julius Gorner who is most likely responsible for this recent influx of drugs, infiltrating both Europe and England with pharmaceuticals in the form of heroin. Changing sides during the 2nd World War, fighting for the Nazis initially and then for the Russians at the battle of Stalingrad, Gorner has become a soldier of fortune, contemptuous of England because he feels as though the country had laughed at him.
So Bond must embark on a mission to doggedly pursue Gorner across Europe to Persia, hot on the trail to shut down the operation of a twisted individual with a demonic sense of purpose. Gorner seems to be beyond reach, locked in a world where ordinary human concerns couldn't touch or weaken him; he's bent on world destruction and domination and has made himself a key figure in the drug world. His only vulnerability is his physicality, marked by a rare deformity, a hair covered wrist shaped like a monkey, and a white glove that hides it.
Surprisingly it is Larissa who also has a connection to Gorner, soon revealing herself as Scarlett Papava, a lonely housewife, busy banker, and lady of the night who wants to enlist James' help to get Poppy, her heroin addicted sister back from the evil clutches of Gorner: "He just won't let her go, he's slowly killing her and loving every moment of it." But there's something about Scarlett that gets right under James' defenses, something about her that makes him feel profoundly uneasy.
With Scarlett determined to find her sister, and James delving deeper into Gorner's criminal enterprises, both are blindsided by the extent of this madman's plans for world domination that eventually plays out deep within the city of Tehran and the vast surrounds of the Caspian Sea.
From London to Paris, to Tehran, and then onto Leningrad and Helsinki, Bond is faced with a world mostly ruled by protection and influence, arms and dollars. In a novel that is filled with misfits and vagabonds, stoolpigeons, agents and secret police, Gorner and Bond must battle it out against a background of the cold war where America is fighting a lonely war for "freedom" in Vietnam and where the threat of the West being overrun by communism is ever present. Formulaic to the last, Faulks doesn't shy away from giving us a series of spectacular set pieces involving a giant ship-sea plane, loaded with nuclear bombs and with a British flag on it and a stolen a Vickers VC10 British airliner, painted with BOAC livery that is heading towards a fiery crash landing in the Soviet Union. Although this novel certainly doesn't reinvent the legend of our favorite secret agent, Bond's adventures are still harrowing in his journey from the known to the unknown with Faulks propelling his story along at break-neck speed, riding the apex to its violent conclusion, with Bond ultimately saving the world and getting his girl. Mike Leonard July 08.
 Shadows of James Bond June 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Unless you are awfully bored for a new Bond adventure, you could skip this book. It's a below-average spy story that employs some of the Bond characteristics without mastering the story telling to make it work. I would rather re-read a Bond original than read this story. But, alas, no one warned me. You have no excuse.
Although many of Ian Fleming's signature elements are present in this story (an unbalanced villain, unspeakable assistant to the villain, rigged competitions, beautiful damsels in distress, and the world's peace at stake), it's all too leisurely and gentlemanly to be a Bond adventure. This Bond doesn't even know he wants to be Bond.
The book started off in promising fashion as Bond is recalled early to face a threat and is directed to meet with Dr. Julius Gorner. Their meeting and confrontation is reasonably exciting, but after that the story goes downhill in terms of threat, excitement, and pacing. I won't bore you with any more information.
 Good to read you again Mr Bond June 19, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Certainly a page turner and Bond's enemy is reminiscent of the Goldfinger / Oddjob combination. It harks back to the 60's but with issues that are still prevalent today. It would be interesting to see if this got made into a film as certain aspects that draw the suspense in the book would have to be technologically `updated'.
A very enjoyable read, Faulks has done a fine job.
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