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A review by stuporfly
The Man With the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming
2.0
The last of Ian Fleming's original James Bond novels is one of his least successful, with the author having died before the editorial process was completed. Would it have been a more enjoyable book had he lived long enough to see it to completion? I'm not convinced.
The Man With the Golden Gun is one of the most incongruous of the Bond series, picking up where its predecessor left off, with the secret agent having been brainwashed by the Soviet secret service to kill the head of the British secret service, known as M. The assassination attempt is thwarted in the moment, and Bond is soon returned to his sour, alcoholic, womanizing self. Bond is then tasked with the job of killing Francisco "Pistols" Scaramanga, who as the title suggests, has a golden gun. Though Scaramanga has killed British secret agents, he seems less the sort of megalomaniacal villain Bond is normally set against, and is instead sort of a hitman. Which is fine, I guess, except it doesn't really work.
For the second time in Fleming's original works, Bond is given the job by a bad guy of taking notes at a meeting of gangsters. It didn't make much sense when it happened in Goldfinger, and it doesn't make much sense here. But not much makes sense here anyway. As a farewell to the original James Bond series, it falls flat. It's not a worthy goodbye, which is partly why I've undertaken the self-appointed task of reading the James Bond timeline following roughly from 1950-69, including books written by other authors (please see my Goodreads blog for further information).
I started reading the series on the page, but a cross-country drive pushed me over into audiobooks. Ordinarily that worked out beautifully, especially as the Fleming estate in 2014 enlisted numerous British actors to read a book each. David Tennant was particularly good, though there were others as well. Kenneth Branagh narrated The Man With the Golden Gun, which was something of a mixed bag, primarily when it came to his interpretation of Scaramanga. In the oft-reviled film adaptation, Scaramanga is played by Christopher Lee with a sort of homicidal aristocratic voice. Here, Branagh Americanizes Scaramanga's voice, and he just sounds like a lazy goon.
Though this is the last of the Fleming works in the timeline (including the short story collections), there are three novels which follow. For more on those, I'll again refer you to my blog, and I will also be reviewing those separately as well.
The Man With the Golden Gun is one of the most incongruous of the Bond series, picking up where its predecessor left off, with the secret agent having been brainwashed by the Soviet secret service to kill the head of the British secret service, known as M. The assassination attempt is thwarted in the moment, and Bond is soon returned to his sour, alcoholic, womanizing self. Bond is then tasked with the job of killing Francisco "Pistols" Scaramanga, who as the title suggests, has a golden gun. Though Scaramanga has killed British secret agents, he seems less the sort of megalomaniacal villain Bond is normally set against, and is instead sort of a hitman. Which is fine, I guess, except it doesn't really work.
For the second time in Fleming's original works, Bond is given the job by a bad guy of taking notes at a meeting of gangsters. It didn't make much sense when it happened in Goldfinger, and it doesn't make much sense here. But not much makes sense here anyway. As a farewell to the original James Bond series, it falls flat. It's not a worthy goodbye, which is partly why I've undertaken the self-appointed task of reading the James Bond timeline following roughly from 1950-69, including books written by other authors (please see my Goodreads blog for further information).
I started reading the series on the page, but a cross-country drive pushed me over into audiobooks. Ordinarily that worked out beautifully, especially as the Fleming estate in 2014 enlisted numerous British actors to read a book each. David Tennant was particularly good, though there were others as well. Kenneth Branagh narrated The Man With the Golden Gun, which was something of a mixed bag, primarily when it came to his interpretation of Scaramanga. In the oft-reviled film adaptation, Scaramanga is played by Christopher Lee with a sort of homicidal aristocratic voice. Here, Branagh Americanizes Scaramanga's voice, and he just sounds like a lazy goon.
Though this is the last of the Fleming works in the timeline (including the short story collections), there are three novels which follow. For more on those, I'll again refer you to my blog, and I will also be reviewing those separately as well.