Devil May Care

I love this book and I highly recommended. I also love the cover very,very much because Dominika van Santen, former Top Model of the World is on the cover and I think that is absolutely amazing and I'm completely shocked and excited about that. The Novel deserves the title New York Times Bestseller because is exciting and very interesting. Two thumbs up!!

If Ian Fleming were alive today, he'd've just turned 100 and I like to think he'd be pretty bloody pleased with the Bond franchise he'd spawned. As a lover of everything Bond from Fleming, though Gardner and Connery through Craig (okay, I was a little disappointed in George Lazerby), I like to think I'm qualified to muse a bit about the latest of the Bond writers. First off I have to say: Well done, Mr. Faulks. Fleming wasn't always politically correct, of course he died before it was fashionable, and Faulks follows in the non PC tradition. I loved Fleming's Bond, read him when I was in high school, saw Goldfinger the day after it opened at Gruman's Chinese Theater. I mourned Ian Fleming's passing and thought I'd seen the last of James Bond, then in 1968 came Colonial Sun, written by Robert Markham (which belongs back in print), who was really the excellent writer Kingsley Amis, who joined Ian Fleming in 1995. That was a great book. Then in the Eighties came the Gardner books. Lord I loved his Bond, loved those books, all fourteen of 'em, but I especially liked his first one, License Renewed. But good things don't last forever and in the late Nineties John Gardner's health forced him to quit doing Bond and sadly last year Mr. Gardner went away and joined Messers Fleming and Kingsley. However, right on the heels of the last Gardner book came the Benson Bond and I liked all six of those as well, read his shorter Bond stories, liked them too. But through it all, Gardner's Bond was not Fleming's Bond, nor was Amis' or Benson's. They'd changed him, some for the better, some for worse. They'd humanized him, grew him up, gave him good stories, great adventurers. But now I feel as if I'm young again, not yet twenty, standing in line with the man I was going to marry at Grauman's, waiting to see Goldfinger. God we loved Bond back then. There was a man. He's back. Thank you, Mr. Faulks. Reviewed by Vesta Irene

Certainly a page turner and Bond's enemy is reminiscent of the Goldfinger / Oddjob combination. It harks back to the 60's but with issues that are still prevalent today. It would be interesting to see if this got made into a film as certain aspects that draw the suspense in the book would have to be technologically `updated'. A very enjoyable read, Faulks has done a fine job.

No spoilers! We just finished read Devil May Care, the new James Bond novel by Sebastian Faulks, writing as Ian Fleming. The novel was commissioned by the Fleming Estate for the 100th Birthday Anniversary of Sir Ian Fleming. It takes place back in the 60s Cold War, right after the Casino Royale/Quantum of Solace movies. It reads like Ian Fleming and is quite enjoyable, short of our inability to translate the French and knowing nothing of tennis! Any true Bond fan should read this novel -- before the screen play comes out!

Faulks does a very good job writing as Fleming. Perhaps in future installments he should make the character his own, but I sincerely hope that Mr. Faulks continues in the vein of this book.