{"id":765,"date":"2012-12-07T16:59:10","date_gmt":"2012-12-07T23:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=765"},"modified":"2013-01-24T17:22:39","modified_gmt":"2013-01-25T00:22:39","slug":"the-man-with-the-golden-gun-ian-fleming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=765","title":{"rendered":"The Man with the Golden Gun – Ian Fleming"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lots of travel for work lately, which means one thing:\u00a0 audio books.\u00a0 One more Bond novel knocked out. This time it was The Man with the Golden Gun<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This was Ian Fleming’s final Bond book.\u00a0 Published a year after Fleming’s death, some have even posited that it wasn’t even finished by him, but other hands.\u00a0 At very least it’s often criticized for not having the polish and depth of his other novels.\u00a0 Still, it’s not a terrible little book.<\/p>\n

The Story:<\/strong>
\nThis book starts with a bang.\u00a0 Bond arrives at headquarters brainwashed from his last mission.\u00a0 He’s on a mission to kill M.\u00a0 His attempt is thwarted and he is slowly deprogrammed and put back in service.\u00a0 His first mission is designed to get him back in 00 shape, and M decides the best way is to give him a nearly impossible task: go to the Caribbean to find and take out the brutal killer Scaramanga.\u00a0 Scaramanga uses a gold-plated colt .45 which shoots silver lined gold bullets.\u00a0 He is thought to be the man behind several secret service agents deaths.<\/p>\n

Bond locates Scaramanga in Jamaican and manages to con himself into being Scaramanga’s temporary assistant under the name “Mark Hazard”.\u00a0 Scaramanga is involved in a hotel development deal on the island with a group of investors that consists of American gangsters and a KGB agent. The group is hatching a scheme to destabilize the sugar industry, running drugs into America, and other nefarious deeds.<\/p>\n

Bond discovers that Felix Leiter is working undercover as an electrical engineer at Scaramanga’s hotel setting up bugs in the meeting rooms.\u00a0 As the meetings progress, Bond’s true identity is discovered and confirmed by the KGB agent.\u00a0 Scaramanga makes new plans to entertain the gangsters and the KGB agent by killing Bond while they are riding a sight-seeing train. Bond, with the help of Leiter, thwarts the ambush and kills most of the conspirators. Wounded, Scaramanga escapes into the swamps, where Bond pursues him where a final shoot-out takes place.<\/p>\n

My take:<\/strong>
\nNot a bad little book, but felt drawn out at times.\u00a0 In fact, in one scene, Bond has Scaramanga completely in his power and knows he should kill him.\u00a0 Yet he does not because he’s curious what Scaramanga is up to.\u00a0 If he’d carried out his orders as instructed, this book would have been about 25 pages.\u00a0 So right off the bat you feel this is a bit of a cheat.
\nThe next low point is that Scaramanga is a bit of a gangster caricature.\u00a0 I found myself getting tired of every other line of his being “Get the picture?” or “See here…”\u00a0 The movie version of him as a classy, million dollar killer of amazing skill is not to be found here.\u00a0 This guy likes to wave his gun around and shoot at people’s heads (missing intentionally) to get their attention.\u00a0 In many ways, he comes off more as a childish punk that never learned gun safety than a calculating killer.
\nStill, it’s not a bad little novel, and worth the read if you’re not going out of your way.\u00a0 C+<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lots of travel for work lately, which means one thing:\u00a0 audio books.\u00a0 One more Bond novel knocked out. This time it was The Man with the Golden Gun This was Ian Fleming’s final Bond book.\u00a0 Published a year after Fleming’s death, some have even posited that it wasn’t even finished by him, but other hands.\u00a0 At very least it’s often criticized for not having the polish and depth of his other novels.\u00a0 Still, it’s not a terrible little book. The…<\/p>\n

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