When Bond goes boom boom

Gaurav Kanthwal

He introduces himself as ‘The name is Bond, James Bond’. He likes his Martini shaken, not stirred. Drives swanky cars, deals in fancy gadgets and dates fancier women. James Bond makes an appearance only when it is absolutely necessary to save the world from falling in wrong hands. Once the job is done, he delivers his trademark one-liner suggestively and retreats into oblivion arm-in-arm with his new-found love.

This much every routine movie-goer knows about James Bond. Beyond that, very little is revealed about this British spy in the realms of movies. Movie-goers are intentionally left starving for details about this dapper spy, for mystique lends him a sex appeal that is hard to resist.

Add to it an overloaded dose of special effects, booming explosions, screeching car chases, one incredible escape, and if all else fails, the mandatory bikini scene gets the job done.

Exorbitant the whole exercise may be, but it is easy to bedazzle spectators in a spy thriller. However, readers, unlike movie-goers, do not submit willingly, they take their time to get conned. Because readers connect with details; details which infuse a life in character, build up an atmosphere and string together a thick plot.

Ian Fleming, the creator of this iconic fictional character, could do it in an off-the-cuff manner, but now that he is dead (1964), it’s double the trouble for succeeding writers. Their Bond has to be the Bond of 1950s and 1960s, yet contemporary.

Anthony Horowitz, roped in by the Ian Fleming Estate, has made a good fist of it in his novel Trigger Mortis. Especially when the book cover subtly throws the bait at the reader ‘With Original Material by Ian Fleming’. The spy game begins as the reader is on a lookout for that original portion morphed into a new story. The vague clue being that it has to be supposedly the best portion of the 320-page novel. Looking back, there is a description of a car race in Nürburgring at the very start which sticks to the memory, eventually it turns out to be Fleming’s handiwork.

Fleming wrote a motor racing scene for a TV series but it did not feature in the programme for some reasons. Hence, a piece of literature from the pen of none other than Ian Fleming, but remaining unpublished.

Effectively, a big-time money-spinner and trust publishers for not letting go of this opportunity.

Horowitz, on his part, takes the credit for weaving the scene in the story as seamlessly as possible. His pastiche of Cold War era (1957) with Russian-American space war as background and Bond hopping through Britain-Germany-USA with his usual chicanery make for an engrossing affair.

More interesting are those details which a Bond admirer will find in books only. Such as James Bond is named so because Fleming wanted his spy’s name to be ‘as mundane as possible’; in movies, Bond will have nothing but Martini, however in novels, he prefers coffee to tea and is not averse to rum, gin, vodka, saki and whiskey.

His intake, half a bottle daily!

On screen, Bond may look cool off and on blowing the smoke down from the corner of his mouth, but in written word, he comes across as a chain smoker, lighting 60 cigarettes every day with his black oxidised Ronson lighter. His cigarette brand — Morlands with the triple gold bands.

In movies, Bond invariably drives an Aston Martin DB10, but in Horowitz’s mind, it is Maserati 250F, always. Only in novels, the tiniest of the details will be elaborated extensively, as novelist dutifully informs, Bond’s gadget guru, Q, has replaced his firearm Beretta 418 with Walther PPK.

His breakfast consists of an egg boiled for three-and-a-third minutes exactly.

Such painstaking details go a long way in endowing Bond with real-life attributes and Horowitz has recreated Fleming’s inimitable style to quite an extent.

Without any doubt, Bond in movies is different from what he is in novels. It would be naïve to compare Horowitz with Fleming, but if an admirer’s fidelity is to the character, it has to be accepted that written word is much closer than movies.

And, Anthony Horowitz is the only choice a reader has now.