Davy Crockett's Almanack of Mystery, Adventure and The Wild West

Friday, March 9, 2018

Forgotten Books: ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE by Ian Fleming (1963)

Look out, there’s a SPOILER coming up. But it’s only a spoiler if you haven’t read the book or seen the movie. The plot element (and ending) I’m going to discuss was a really big deal in the film, and it’s because that element is so underplayed in the novel that I feel compelled to bring it up.

Yeah, I’m talking about Bond getting married, and his bride’s almost immediate demise. She had to die, of course, just like every unwitting damsel who every got engaged to one of the Cartwright boys. But the way it’s presented in the book, it’s pretty hard to swallow. Bond spends one night with this woman, finds her to be mentally disturbed, and scoffs at her father’s suggestion that he marry her.

Months later, meeting her again (in an amazingly contrived situation), he spends a couple of hours with her (with his clothes on, no less), decides she’s the love of his life, and proposes. I just didn’t buy it.

So why did Fleming do it? Well, it's pretty obvious he wanted a way to rationalize Bond recruiting a group of Corsican mobsters to help assault the stronghold of his arch-enemy, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. That assault makes for a cool scene, and the friendship between Bond and head mobster (his fiancé’s father) seems genuine. But once that’s over, Mrs. Bond is simply discarded like the plot device she is. She’s snuffed out on the final page of the book, the story’s over, and we get no glimpse of Bond’s grief, if any. This was not Fleming’s finest hour.

Otherwise, it was fine Bond book. One of the funniest parts was seeing him 007 play the role of a snooty aristocrat from the royal genealogical society. And there’s a cool tribute to Rex Stout.

It's set up when we learn that M’s hobby is to paint watercolors of the wild orchids of England. As Bond enters M's office, he's hunched over his drawing board with a pitiful looking flower in front of him. Here's what follows:

“What the devil’s the name of that fat American detective who’s always fiddling about with orchids, those obscene hybrids from Venezuela and so forth? Then he comes sweating out of his orchid house, eats a gigantic meal of some foreign muck and solves the murder. What’s he called?”

“Nero Wolfe, sir. They’re written by a chap called Rex Stout. I like them.”

“They’re readable,” condescended M. “But I was thinking of the orchid stuff in them. How in hell can a man like those disgusting flowers? Why, they’re damned near animals, and their colours, all those pinks and mauves and the blotchy yellow tongues, are positively hideous! Now that”—M waved at the meagre little bloom in the tooth-glass—“that’s the real thing. That’s an Autumn Lady’s Tresses—spiranthes spiralis, not that I care particularly. Flowers in England as late as October and should be under the ground by now. But I got this forced-late specimen from a man I know—assistant to a chap called Summerhayes who’s the orchid king at Kew. My friend’s experimenting with cultures of a fungus which oddly enough is a parasite on a lot of orchids, but, at the same time, gets eaten by the orchids and acts as a stable diet, Mycorhiza it’s called.” M gave another of his rare smiles. “But you needn’t write it down. Just wanted to take a leaf out of this fellow Nero Wolfe’s book.”

So Ian Fleming was a Stout fan. If you ain't, you should be too.