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A review by stuporfly
Diamonds Are Forever by Ian Fleming
4.0
Five books into my attempt to read the entirety of the James Bond series in the character's chronology (Forever and a Day by Anthony Horowitz, a recently published prequel to Ian Fleming's Bond debut, plus Fleming's first four Bond novels), and a pattern is emerging: James Bond gets the shit kicked out of him an awful lot. In the case of Diamonds Are Forever, we only get the prelude to Bond's beating, followed by its aftermath, and we're therefore left to imagine the worst. Colorful mob enforcers Wint and Kidd administer the bodily harm, and Bond's uncharacteristic inability to identify them as trouble later yields a grim scene aboard a transatlantic cruise ship.
Bond is still a chauvinistic prig - by now there's little point in hoping for otherwise - and a snob to boot. At times his observations of Las Vegas gamblers and revelers feels like a precursor to Patrick Bateman's cold inner monologue in American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.
There is also the standard casual racism throughout the book, plus a particularly gruesome paragraph recounting some of the open racism in an earlier novel, Live and Let Die, a paragraph which ends with a terrible joke. These novels would be so much more enjoyable, at least from here, if Fleming's bigotry wasn't so prevalent. That it was apparently more acceptable back then isn't relevant at all.
The value in Diamonds Are Forever is in the plot, the intricacies of the criminal enterprise Bond is sent to infiltrate and destroy, and the often poetic minutiae of Fleming's prose. Whether he accurately describes gambling, as he does here for the third time in four novels, the author certainly makes it seem interesting.
Fun, too, is the window into a world of intrigue, circa 1956. Whether well-heeled and lushly ornate, or worn to the nub and dusty as fuck, the scenes are set beautifully.
It's also interesting to see what filmmakers took from Fleming's original story when Diamonds Are Forever hit the big screen in 1971. Certainly more here made the journey than the novel's predecessor, Moonraker. Some of the diamond smuggling is still there, and a bit of Las Vegas. Wint and Kidd aren't exactly as described in the book, but they were well cast in the film. Shady Tree onscreen is wholly unlike his portrayal on the page, and the film includes a few central characters that aren't anywhere near the plot in the book. Diamonds Are Forever isn't a bad James Bond film, but the book is better.
Bond is still a chauvinistic prig - by now there's little point in hoping for otherwise - and a snob to boot. At times his observations of Las Vegas gamblers and revelers feels like a precursor to Patrick Bateman's cold inner monologue in American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.
There is also the standard casual racism throughout the book, plus a particularly gruesome paragraph recounting some of the open racism in an earlier novel, Live and Let Die, a paragraph which ends with a terrible joke. These novels would be so much more enjoyable, at least from here, if Fleming's bigotry wasn't so prevalent. That it was apparently more acceptable back then isn't relevant at all.
The value in Diamonds Are Forever is in the plot, the intricacies of the criminal enterprise Bond is sent to infiltrate and destroy, and the often poetic minutiae of Fleming's prose. Whether he accurately describes gambling, as he does here for the third time in four novels, the author certainly makes it seem interesting.
Fun, too, is the window into a world of intrigue, circa 1956. Whether well-heeled and lushly ornate, or worn to the nub and dusty as fuck, the scenes are set beautifully.
It's also interesting to see what filmmakers took from Fleming's original story when Diamonds Are Forever hit the big screen in 1971. Certainly more here made the journey than the novel's predecessor, Moonraker. Some of the diamond smuggling is still there, and a bit of Las Vegas. Wint and Kidd aren't exactly as described in the book, but they were well cast in the film. Shady Tree onscreen is wholly unlike his portrayal on the page, and the film includes a few central characters that aren't anywhere near the plot in the book. Diamonds Are Forever isn't a bad James Bond film, but the book is better.