Diamonds Are Forever (1971) | Music

I kind of want to rag on the Diamonds Are Forever title sequence like I have most of the rest of the movie, but there are some cool things about it. Maurice Binder's not being innovative - he's found his formula by now and all he has to do is riff on it - but he's still Maurice Binder and he does some fun stuff.

The last shot of the cold open is of Blofeld's angry, apparently orphaned cat, so Binder transforms the animal's eye into a diamond. The rest of the sequence is close-ups of diamond jewelry being worn by women, with some obligatory silhouettes thrown in. In amongst the women and the jewelry though, he also puts the cat, either spoiling or reassuring that Blofeld is still going to be a big part of the show.

For the theme song, John Barry re-teamed with Don Black who'd partnered with him on the Thunderball rush job. They wrote a breakup song that incorporates the movie's title (I always love that formula), but even better is the music itself. He brought back Shirley Bassey to sing it and between her sultrily boisterous voice, some big stingers from the horn section, and a slinky guitar riff, the song is one of my favorites in the whole series.

Barry's back to using the Bond Theme sparingly in Diamonds, but he does it well, always at key moments. It first comes into play when we finally see Sean Connery's face in the cold open, getting us excited about the return of the familiar Bond. The next time it shows up is when Bond is crossing the Channel in the hovercraft, starting his mission. And finally, it appears again when he arrives at Willard Whyte's summer house, his first huge break in the case.

Barry also brings back the 007 Theme he introduced in From Russia With Love. That's what's playing over the movie's finale once Bond gets control of Blofeld's bathosub, the majestic music making it obvious that Bond's now going to be victorious.

Top Ten Theme Songs

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2. Diamonds Are Forever 
3. You Only Live Twice
4. From Russia With Love (John Barry instrumental version)
5. Dr No
6. Thunderball
7. Goldfinger
8. From Russia With Love (Matt Monro vocal version)
9. TBD
10. TBD

Top Ten Title Sequences

1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
2. Dr No
3. Thunderball
4. Goldfinger
5. From Russia With Love
6. Diamonds Are Forever
7. You Only Live Twice
8. TBD
9. TBD
10. TBD

Diamonds Are Forever (1971) | Villains

So they brought back Blofeld one more time and it's once too many. I love the idea of bringing him back for Bond to get his revenge, but not like this. Not with this tone and not played by Charles Gray.

For years I thought I hated Charles Gray, because he kept getting miscast in Bond films. I recently, finally saw a movie that I loved him in though. He plays the leader of a Satanic cult and battles Christopher Lee in 1968's The Devil Rides Out. It's a perfect role for him, because he can be as prissy and cowardly as he wants and I'm supposed to despise him. But those traits make him a lousy Dikko Henderson in You Only Live Twice and a worse Blofeld. He's a stunning disappointment after Telly Savalas' tough guy in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

When he escapes Bond by dressing as a woman, I don't even blink an eye. That's exactly the kind of thing this Blofeld would do. But just try to imagine Savalas or the Blofeld of Thunderball doing that. Heck, try to imagine Donald Pleasance doing that!

One thing he has in common with Pleasance's Blofeld though is that they're both dumber than their cats. There are a couple of times when Blofeld has the opportunity to destroy Bond in Diamonds and doesn't. Having Wint and Kidd just drop him unconscious in a pipe and leave it out in the open - hoping that it gets buried the next day by random workers - is ludicrous. And later, when Bond shows up at the oil rig, Blofeld again passes up having him shot.

Admittedly, it's too late on both of those occasions for Blofeld's plan to succeed. Thanks to Bond's competent - if not especially impressive - detective work, too many people have all the information they need to shut Blofeld down. But Blofeld at least has the chance to rid himself of Bond once and for all, then escape to plan another caper. He doesn't care though. That's a recurring motif in this movie.



Wint and Kidd are memorable henchmen, because they're so odd and disturbing. Especially jazz musician Putter Smith as Mr. Kidd. Apparently, the producers wanted both killers to be played by musicians and originally went for Paul Williams as Wint, but they couldn't reach an agreement about the money. So they hired Bruce Glover to play Wint instead. They originally told Glover he looked too normal for the role, but the actor makes up for it with the same, innate creepiness he passed on to his son, Crispin Glover.

Wint and Kidd are gay like they are in the novel, but it isn't their attraction to each other that makes them so disconcerting. And interestingly for 1971, no one even comments on it except for Bond's criticizing Wint's cologne. Like everything else about them though, Wint and Kidd's gayness is played really weird. They call each other by their surnames and could not look less natural holding hands. They're completely bizzare as a couple and I'm endlessly fascinated trying to imagine their home life when they're not on an assignment.

And speaking of assignments, just who are they working for when they try to kill Bond at the end of the movie? And why are they trying to use flaming skewers and a bomb? They seem like competent assassins earlier in the movie, but between putting Bond in that pipe and the pointless attack on the ocean liner, they turn out to be not that good.



You know who else are pointless and not that good? Bambi and Thumper are completely lame with their crazy dance moves and sort of taking turns attacking Bond. They don't even really take turns, because one of them will just slither around a little or do some cartwheels before throwing it back to the other. And then Bond defeats them because apparently the fight's gone on long enough and it's time for it to end.

Top Ten Villains

1. Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)
2. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (From Russia With Love and Thunderball)
3. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
4. Doctor No (Dr. No)
5. Emilio Largo (Thunderball)
6. Rosa Klebb (From Russia With Love)
7. Kronsteen (From Russia With Love)
8. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (You Only Live Twice)
9. Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Diamonds Are Forever)
10. TBD

Top Ten Henchmen

1. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
2. Grant (From Russia With Love)
3. Oddjob (Goldfinger)
4. Irma Bunt (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
5. Miss Taro (Dr. No)
6. Professor Dent (Dr. No)
7. Morzeny (From Russia With Love)
8. Hans (You Only Live Twice)
9. Helga Brandt (You Only Live Twice)
10. Vargas (Thunderball)

Diamonds Are Forever (1971) | Women

Jill St John is really charming as Tiffany Case, but she's a much different character than the one Fleming wrote. In the novel, Case is a tough, but damaged woman who relates to the also tough, also damaged Bond. In the movie, she's still tough and all-business on the surface, but that's a cover for incompetence, not pain. St John's Tiffany is all bravado that fails her when the pressure really gets going.

She's interesting for a while, agreeing to double-cross her bosses and abscond with the diamonds alongside Bond. St John plays it cool and there's no telling at first whose side she's really on. As it turns out, she's playing Bond and stays loyal to her hidden bosses until it becomes apparent that they're trying to kill her.

Once she's on Bond's side though, she doesn't make sense anymore. She has opportunities to take off and escape prison, but she inexplicably sticks around; I guess hoping that Bond will use some influence to drop the charges against her. That works out for her in the end, but it's a super risky play. The impression I get is that she's pretty tough when she has the hierarchy of the smuggling ring backing her up, but she has no idea what to do or how to survive on her own. So she trades in the smugglers for Bond and hopes for the best.

I mentioned in a previous post that Diamonds Are Forever sets the tone for the Roger Moore era and that's evident in Tiffany Case. She's the prototype of the smart/tough woman who suddenly turns dumb partway through the movie, though in her case she was always pretty dumb and just covered it well for a while.



The other major woman in Diamonds is Plenty O'Toole, played by Lana Wood. She's barely even a character and does nothing but bounce between high rollers in the casino. We know nothing more about her than that. Is she a prostitute? Just a gold-digger? Is there some kind of sad backstory that explains why she's ended up here? No idea. The movie doesn't care.

It also doesn't care to explain how she ends up dead in Tiffany's swimming pool, mistaken for Tiffany. Bond says that Plenty went to Tiffany's place to look for the smuggler, but why would Plenty do that? Does she know Tiffany? Who cares? Not this film.

Neither Plenty nor Tiffany crack my Top 10.

My Favorite Bond Women

1. Tracy Bond (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)
2. Paula Caplan (Thunderball)
3. Tatiana Romanova (From Russia With Love)
4. Fiona Volpe (Thunderball)
5. Domino Derval (Thunderball)
6. Honey Rider (Dr. No)
7. Sylvia Trench (Dr. No and From Russia With Love)
8. Aki (You Only Live Twice)
9. Pussy Galore (Goldfinger)
10. Tilly Masterson (Goldfinger)

Diamonds Are Forever (1971) | Bond

Actors and Allies 



I used to assume that Connery's return in Diamonds meant that George Lazenby was a failed experiment. That Saltzman and Broccoli were displeased with Lazenby and fired him before coming to their senses and begging Connery to come back. Boy, was I wrong. Lazenby turned down a seven-picture contract and left the series of his own free will to become a hippie. (Incidentally, OHMSS director Peter Hunt was also invited back, but had to decline for scheduling reasons, so they brought back Goldfinger director Guy Hamilton instead.)

The producers next approached American actor John Gavin (though they also considered Adam West). Gavin's probably best known for playing Sam Loomis in Psycho. United Artists wasn't having it though. Not wanting to risk another new Bond, they insisted on having Connery back whatever the cost. They bought out Gavin's contract and paid Connery £1.25 million, the equivalent of about £23 million today.

Sadly, Connery was as enthused about playing Bond in Diamonds as he was in You Only Live Twice. But though he looks bored in both, it presents itself in different ways. In YOLT, because of the humorlessness of Roald Dahl's script, Bond comes across as serious and dull. In Diamonds, he takes nothing seriously. He's amused at everything, which removes any possibility of tension from the film.

The one time he becomes serious (not counting the cold open), is when he's talking to Tiffany after Plenty O'Toole is murdered. It's possible that he's upset about Plenty's death, but I get the impression that it's more about convincing Tiffany that she's in danger. He slaps her during that scene, which is where the power balance shifts between the two of them. She realizes then that he's not just some underling who wants to double-cross the smugglers and run away with her. It's a jolting scene and doesn't work for me because it's so out of character for the version of Bond that Connery's playing in the rest of the movie. Unfortunately, it's the only way she's going to take him seriously and get out of the way so that he can be in charge for the last half of the film. That Bond has to resort to smacking a woman to be taken seriously illustrates the big problem with Connery's performance.

Conney doesn't even look like Bond anymore. Maybe it's the gray in his hair, maybe it's his longer sideburns. Maybe it's just a really bad toupee. Whatever the reason, he's no longer a debonair spy, but an aging, slightly creepy old dude (even though he was only 40 when the movie was filmed).

M is irritated with Bond in their scenes, but that's not especially anything new in the series. We've seen it particularly clearly with Q. As Bond becomes a less serious character, that grates on the nerves of the people giving him his orders.

In keeping with the weird tone of the movie, the Moneypenny scene is really awkward. Not only is she in the field wearing a fake uniform to perform an extremely minor task (giving Bond his fake passport), but her banter with him is super inappropriate. He's off to Holland and offers to bring her back something, so she asks for a diamond... in a ring. Whether or not she's serious about wanting an engagement ring from him (and I dearly hope she's not, but you can read it either way), that's just an awful thing to say to someone whose wife was recently murdered. Again, the movie isn't thinking about stuff like that. It's just making sure we get some Moneypenny flirting in and doesn't care if it makes any sense.

Felix Leiter shows up in Diamonds, but he has no personality. He's only there to make Bond's activities official on US soil and to occasionally fix things. It's dumb though that he can't authorize an interview between Bond and reclusive millionaire Willard Whyte. By the time Bond makes that request, he has plenty of evidence proving that Whyte is deeply connected to the smuggling ring, but Felix acts like Bond just wants to see Whyte on a hunch.

And speaking of Willard Whyte, he's the best thing about this movie. Country singer/sausage king Jimmy Dean is awesome, charming, and completely convincing as a guy who's been forced out of his business empire. He's equal parts frustrated by the situation and determined to fix it. Love him a lot.

Best Quip



"Well, as long as the collars and cuffs match..." concerning his preference in women's hair color.

Worst Quip



"Named after your father, perhaps?" to Plenty O'Toole when she introduces herself. What does that even mean? Is he implying that she's Peter O'Toole's daughter? Why?

Gadgets



There are a few gadgets in Diamonds, but some of them are relatively mundane, like fake fingerprints and a grappling gun. Blofeld's voice changer is pretty cool and I enjoy Q's nonchalance about the ease with which he duplicates it.

The water ball that Bond uses to reach Blofeld's oil rig is iconic, but that's less a gadget than another reference to new, real-world technology like the hovercraft from earlier in the film.

That leaves my favorite of Diamonds' gadgets: the finger trap in Bond's holster that snaps a henchman's fingers when trying to confiscate Bond's gun in the cold open. It's brutal and bloody; a good match for what that cold open is supposed to be.

Top Ten Gadgets

1. Aston Martin DB V (Goldfinger and Thunderball)
2. Jet pack (Thunderball)
3. Little Nellie (You Only Live Twice)
4. Rocket cigarettes (You Only Live Twice)
5. Attaché case (From Russia With Love)
6. Propeller SCUBA tank with built-in spearguns (Thunderball)
7. Rebreather (Thunderball)
8. Camera-tape recorder; mostly because it reminds me of a camera my dad used to use (From Russia With Love)
9. Seagull SCUBA hat (Goldfinger)
10. Holster finger trap (Diamonds Are Forever)

Bond's Best Outfit



Can't go wrong with a classic, black tux and the red carnation is a nice touch.

Bond's Worst Outfit



I don't mind the pinkness of the tie; it's the ridiculously short length. The '70s, man.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971) | Story

Plot Summary

After sweeping the last movie's heavy ending under the rug, Bond tries to uncover a diamond smuggling ring before it shuts down. Hilarity ensues.

Influences

On Her Majesty's Secret Service was one of the top money-making movies of 1969, but it still made far less than You Only Live Twice. Saltzman and Broccoli wanted the series back to where it was, so for the next film, they made a conscious effort to duplicate old successes. Goldfinger had done extremely well in the US, thanks in part to a lot of its being set there, so the producers chose another US-based novel, Diamonds Are Forever, as the next film.

Richard Maibaum was brought back to write the script with US writer Tom Mankiewicz coming in to give it an American feel. The basic set up from Fleming's novel was used, but the mastermind behind the smuggling ring was changed from standard gangsters to Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

A minor influence that popped into the movie was the English Channel hovercraft. The hovercraft had been operating for a couple of years by the time Diamonds came out, but it was still a cool, new thing. Referencing new, real-world technology soon became a recurring phenomenon in the Bond movies.

One thing that some think is an influence - but isn't - is the conspiracy theory that the US moon landing was faked. At one point, Bond encounters some men in spacesuits on a moon set, but that's just a reference to the space program in general. The facility that Bond's infiltrated does space research, so those are just astronauts in training. The fake moon landing conspiracy theory didn't get big until a few years after Diamonds.

How Is the Book Different?

I've already mentioned Blofeld. His scheme for the diamonds is completely different from the gangsters' plan in the novel, which is just about making money. We'll talk more about Blofeld's plan in the Villains post, but since Saltzman and Broccoli were trying to recapture the feel of blockbusters like Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice, they needed Blofeld to do something bodacious with those diamonds.

The movie also skips over all the New York stuff from the novel so that it can get to Vegas more quickly and spend more time there. That may have been partially a budget thing (thanks to Sean Connery's enormous salary for the film), but I don't know that New York was ever in the movie script.

Moment That's Most Like Fleming



Though the villains' plans are totally different in the movie, a lot of stuff early in the film is right out of the novel. Wint and Kidd's shutting down the pipeline is from there, and even the death of Blofeld's double in the cold open is inspired by the mud bath scene from the book.

The scene that's closest though is when Bond meets Tiffany in her apartment. It's not a word for word reenactment, but the tone and the characters are exactly right. Bond's pretending to be smuggler Peter Franks and he's bewildered and a little amused that his contact is a tough woman.

Moment That's Least Like Fleming



Again, there's the whole ending, but more than that, Diamonds strikes a weird, goofy tone that's completely foreign to Fleming. That moon scene is one example, with the astronauts moving in slow motion for no reason as they try to stop Bond. The worst though is when Tiffany is walking through the Circus Circus casino and an elephant inexplicably wanders up to a slot machine and plays it.

The Roger Moore era has the reputation for being silly and over-the-top, but that starts right here. As dumb as You Only Live Twice was, I never get the feeling that it's intentionally dumb. But audiences seemed to love that stupidity and Saltman/Broccoli decided to keep serving it up.

Cold Open



The job of Diamonds' cold open is to resolve the end of On Her Majesty's Secret Service as quickly as possible. It opens with a series of beatings as an unseen Bond tries to locate Blofeld and take revenge for Tracy's death. We hear Connery's voice as he questions the underlings, but we don't see him until he arrives at a villa to question a sunbathing woman, choking her with her own bikini top.

She directs him to Blofeld, who's in the middle of surgically creating doubles of himself. Bond and Blofeld fight and Blofeld is apparently killed. Though Blofeld of course turns up later, the cold open wants you to believe that that's it. OHMSS is now wrapped up all tidy and we can get back to the fun Bond that we apparently want.

The cold open is supposed to be the serious, brutal finale to OHMSS, but it doesn't work that way. Forgetting for a second that the rest of Diamonds completely undermines it, the cold open doesn't even work on its own. Connery's performance (which I'll get into more in the next post) is so disinterested that it's impossible to take his quest for vengeance seriously. Even the voiceover work before you see his face lacks any real emotion. In ranking it, I only put it ahead of You Only Live Twice because at least it has a couple of gruesome mud bath deaths.

Top 10 Cold Opens

1. Thunderball
2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
3. Goldfinger
4. From Russia With Love
5. Diamonds Are Forever
6. You Only Live Twice
7. TBD
8. TBD
9. TBD
10. TBD

Movie Series Continuity



With Blofeld "dead" in the cold open, everything's supposed to go back to normal. M says as much in the very first scene, callously dismissing any feelings that Bond still has about his wife's death. Which sadly is fair, because Bond doesn't seem to have any feelings about Tracy. Hunting down and killing Blofeld was apparently an obligation, not satisfaction. Bond actually seems amused by it. But then he seems amused by pretty much everything in the movie.

Bond's still a know-it-all (about sherry this time) and it still irritates M. And keeping with M and Moneypenny's field activities in You Only Live Twice, Moneypenny and Q both leave MI6 HQ in Diamonds. I can buy that Q might be needed in Las Vegas (though why he has to deliver Bond's equipment personally is never explained), but there's no reason whatsoever for Moneypenny to show up at Customs - in uniform - to deliver Bond his fake passport. It's nothing but a ridiculous way to get her into the movie, because audiences want to see Bond banter with her. The filmmakers are just putting checkmarks in boxes at this point.

Oh, you know what continuity isn't in Diamonds? The hat rack trick. Apparently Bond's throwing his hat to Moneypenny at the wedding was the last time he'd do that, which actually suits me just fine. I'll miss that bit, but I'm glad that it went out with some emotion and meaning attached to it.

One final bit of continuity is that everyone still knows who James Bond is. His notoriety goes beyond SPECTRE now and includes common smugglers like Tiffany Case or crooked casino managers like Bert Saxby. Bond's faked death in You Only Live Twice hasn't even fooled the general public.

"Diamonds Are Forever": The Comic Strip

By "Diamonds Are Forever," the quality of the James Bond strip has stabilized into mediocre. Artist John McLusky has moments of greatness where he's put a lot of thought into a composition or is clearly having fun with a particular panel, but he's inconsistent. There are just as many examples of his work looking rushed and unfinished.

For his part, writer Henry Gammidge continues presenting Bond as a stock adventure hero. I love that he occasionally takes a panel to describe what Bond's eating or to portray some other detail from the book that's insignificant to the plot, but even though Bond's narrating the strip, Gammidge offers no look into what makes Bond tick as a character. He doesn't even present Fleming's take on Bond, much less offer any insight of his own.

This is especially problematic in Bond's relationship with Tiffany Case. That's a complicated relationship in the novel, with Bond needing to use Tiffany, but highly reluctant to hurt her. When he finally confesses that he's falling in love with her, Fleming's already convinced me that that's true. And the same is true of Case's feelings about Bond. None of that is present in the comic strip though, so we just have Bond and Case running around together and then suddenly being in love at the end. The story hasn't earned that revelation.



It's also unearned when Bond grows impatient in his undercover role as a lackey for the mob. Unlike the languid pace of the novel, the strip is so brisk that it's hard to believe that Bond is bored. So when he disobeys the mob's instructions to him about not gambling in their facility, it's nothing more than an act of petulance. With nothing motivating it, it just feels like Bond does it unnaturally in order to keep the plot moving.

That kind of rushing also weakens the power of the telegram the mob gets from England blowing Bond's cover. There's no mention of how the London branch of the mob knows that Bond isn't actually Peter Franks; it just says that Bond's a fake and should be killed. Gammidge doesn't seem interested in actually adapting the story to comic strip form; just translating it as efficiently as possible to hit all the scenes. Thanks to McLusky, that translation is sometimes beautifully done, but not always.

There are other problems too that have nothing to do with the story. Like for instance when Felix refers to his previous career in the FBI instead of the CIA. Or the numerous instances of word balloons being placed oddly so that the eye reads them out of order. The lettering is a problem that stays with the strip at least into "From Russia With Love."

There's too much Fleming in the James Bond strip and I like too much of McLusky's work to let me hate it or lose interest. I'm always curious to see how McLusky is going to interpret a character or setting. But I also don't love or especially recommend the strip. It captures the stories, but not the soul of Fleming's work. And its creators don't offer enough of their own to replace that missing spirit and make the strip great.

Dr No by Ian Fleming

When I wrote about From Russia with Love, I repeated the common myth that Ian Fleming was growing tired of the Bond series by then and wanted to kill off his main character. Turns out, that's not entirely accurate. Fleming was certainly experimenting when he wrote From Russia with Love, but not out of desperate boredom. He was simply interested in improving the series and was willing to take risks to do so.

Part of the myth of Bond's death is that Raymond Chandler is the one who talked Fleming out of making it permanent. But according to one Bond FAQ, Chandler's advice to Fleming was simply to criticize Diamonds Are Forever (I agree that it's a weak book) and suggest that Fleming could do better. Fleming took that to heart and From Russia with Love was the result. But there's other evidence - also dating back to Diamonds Are Forever - that implies Fleming always intended for Bond to live beyond From Russia with Love.

Shortly after Diamonds Are Forever was published, Fleming received a now-famous letter from a fan named Geoffrey Boothroyd who was also a gun expert. Boothroyd criticized Bond's use of the .25 Beretta as inappropriate and recommended the Walther PPK as a superior choice. Fleming also took this advice to heart, but was already too far into writing From Russia with Love to make the change for that book, so he replied to Boothroyd that he'd include that idea in the next one, which turned out to be Dr No. Apparently, the intention was never to leave Bond dead after From Russia with Love, but simply to end on a cliffhanger and get readers buzzing for the next installment. The myth could be the result of people getting Fleming confused with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who did grow tired of Sherlock Holmes and killed him off before later changing his mind.

As Dr No opens, Bond is still recuperating from Rosa Klebb's poison and M is nervous about sending 007 back into action. He discusses the agent's shelf life with the neurologist who's been watching over Bond's recovery and we get some insight to M's thoughts on pain in general and how much he expects his agents to be able to take. He doesn't want to coddle Bond and risk softening him up, but M is also aware that Bond's been through a rough time and doesn't need to be thrown up against another threat like SMERSH right away. Instead, M has a gravy assignment in mind for Bond; what M calls a "holiday in the sun."

From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming

Major SPOILERS BELOW for the novel From Russia With Love.

I’m confused about how much time has passed between Moonraker and From Russia With Love. That’s a weird problem to have, I know, because it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme, but Fleming is so specific about it and his dates don’t match up. At the end of Moonraker, M says he’s sending Bond away for a month until the heat blows over, and Bond decides he’s going to France. Then, as Diamonds Are Forever opens, Bond says that he’s only been back from France for two weeks. But in From Russia With Love, the Soviets discuss Bond’s recent career and date Diamonds as “last year” and Moonraker as three years ago.

The obvious answer is that Fleming simply forgot that he’d placed Diamonds so close to Moonraker. He said at the beginning of Moonraker that typically Bond has only one or two big, dangerous cases a year – and of course the novels were being published once a year – so that’s probably what Fleming was thinking as he wrote Russia. That’s not very satisfying, so my own No-Prize theory is that the France trip mentioned in Diamonds isn’t actually the same as the one at the end of Moonraker. Fleming obviously intended them to be, but if we say they aren’t, then those adventures can be a year apart and we’re back on track again.

The timeline isn’t the only problem the Soviets cause in From Russia With Love. The biggest one sadly isn’t their plans for Bond, but how much of the novel they take over. Stephen King is famous for dedicating pages and pages of background to minor characters, but Fleming did it first. Every contributor to the Soviets’ plan gets at least a paragraph of personal history and most of them a page or two. Red Grant the assassin gets multiple chapters. If I was reading the series a book per year as they were released, this wouldn’t be that big a problem. I might still have been a little put out, but I could perhaps admire the risk Fleming took more than I do now. Marathoning a book a week, I want to keep moving and I had a hard time slogging through the first half of Russia before Bond shows up.

Diamonds Are Forever by Ian Fleming

With three of the Bond novels behind me – four counting this one – I feel like I almost know what I’m doing, so I’m going to try a new format. For one thing, in order for me to stay on target and wrap this project up in eighteen months, I’ve got to read faster, so no more breaking novels into multiple posts.

But also, I’ve kind of figured out what themes I want to focus on, so I’m going to try out a standardized structure to see if that keeps me organized. I’ll briefly summarize the plot and any interesting details from Fleming’s life that may have contributed to it, then talk about Bond’s character development in terms of his tactics, psychology, and relationships. Finally, I’ll mention any building that Fleming does of Bond’s world and offer closing thoughts on the book as a whole.

Mission Briefing

Two weeks after the Moonraker affair, M asks Bond to investigate a diamond smuggling pipeline that’s threatening Britain’s control over the world’s diamond markets. Bond’s job is to ascertain the extent of the operation so that it can be shut down. To do this, he replaces an arrested smuggler named Peter Franks and meets Franks’ contact, a woman called Tiffany Case who gives him diamonds to sneak into the United States.