Thunderball

As I read through the series – yes, I read all 13 one after another – I thought about all the people who won’t have the joy of Mr. Fleming’s talent. Yes, the setting is dated, he writes things that would get him vilified these days, but the setting is accurate for the time. And the series is an interesting step through time as subtle things change from novel to novel. I remember reading the critics who called James Bond a plethora of unflattering names. Those critics obviously saw the movies – the Hollywood version of 007 – and never read the books. So now you have the chance. Find out who Bond, James Bond, really is. You’ll love him, empathize with him or hate him. If the actual stories don’t move you in some way then you have more problems than I have space to deal with. Thunderball has always been my favorite movie with From Russia With Love running a very close second. Reading the actual novel has done nothing to change that.

Thunderball had its origins as a screenplay that Fleming was working on with two other writers so, in a sense, it would seem ready-made for film with Flemings book as the novelization of the screenplay. All of this took shortly before the famous film series was launched, with Thunderball coming out over a year before the film Dr. No. It is a fairly cinematic novel, although there is still much exposition and internal monologue that would need to be excised from any workable screenplay.

Unlike the film series, in which the terrorist organization SPECTRE and its master mind Ernst Stavro Blofeld were introduced from the beginning, Thunderball is the first novel of the series that features this organization and its supervillain. The reason for the emergence of SPECTRE is partially because the Soviet organization Smersh was dismantled by Nikita Khrushchev in 1958. What are ex-foreign spies to do to stay in business? Blofeld provides them with a second career, assembling ex-Smersh, Gestapo, Mafiosi and other refugees from foreign intelligence. SPECTRE is an acronym for Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. The mission that will thrust them on the world stage is a blackmail plot involving the hijacking of a jet carrying two nuclear bombs. Ransom letters are sent both to the Prime Minister of Britain and the President of the United States giving them seven days to hand over $300,000,000. Or is that pounds? Its a large amount (for 1961) regardless of the currency. This, of course, is Terrorism circa early 1960s, where the terrorists issue warnings with escape clauses (at least on the surface), unlike their 21st century counterpart Al Qaeda.

By coincidence, Bond has already encountered a key player in the SPECTRE plot, whom he made an enemy with a vendetta by reporting him for his connection with the Red Lightning Tong criminal organization. Bond follows his hunches and suspects, rightly, that Emilio Largo, a rich Italian property owner in the Bahamas with a massive luxury yacht, is the agent responsible for executing the plan for removing the bombs from the sunken aircraft and transporting them to a location where they can be detonated. Bond is reunited with his old C.I.A. buddy Felix Leiter and they both make the acquaintance of Largo. Meanwhile, Bond also coincidentally makes the acquaintance of Largos mistress, Domino Vitali, who also happens to be the sister of the primary hijacker who was himself murdered by other SPECTRE agents.

Despite the grandiosity of the scenario and the megalomania of the villains, Fleming infuses Thunderball with a convincing air of authenticity. The sadism of the villains is more understated than those from Goldfinger, Dr. No and From Russia With Love and the hand to hand combat minimized (or at least confined to underwater battles).The characters are actually relatively believable and their motivations stem naturally from what we know of them. Even though the blackmail plot is far-fetched it holds together better than Goldfingers ludicrous Ft. Knox heist. Largo possesses a smooth, oily charm (merely the veneer for malevolent desires) that I can see not tipping off the unsuspecting. In other words, he doesnt walk around like Dr. No and Goldfinger with a sign on his head stating Im a world class villain.

Domino, the obligatory Bond girl (the only one in this novel as opposed to the three or four in most of the films), is also a fully dimensional person (at least within the dimensions of the world of Bond). She is tough and refuses to back down even when tortured. She is not demonstrative in her swooning to Bonds animal charms and she also saves his life.

Felix Leiter, in some novels simply the C.I.A. sidekick whose presence signifies that Fleming is throwing the Americans a bone, is here in all his sarcastic glory. There is much more dialogue in this novel between him and Bond than in previous novels. His role in the case is almost as essential as Bonds and he has a wry, cynical outlook that he never hesitates to express. Actually, he reminds me of Donald Hamiltons American James Bond equivalent, Matt Helm (forget the absurd Dean Martin film depiction). This is probably as close as we will ever get to see what the experience of Bond and Helm working together would be like.

I see this novel as Flemings attempt to move James Bond forward in timenew decade, new villains. This is the international espionage of the future, he seemed to be saying, where spying can no longer be viewed as the opposition of nationalities but as the opposition of national world powers with freelance terrorist organizations. In a general sense, his prediction was on the nose even if the details differed significantly.

It is interesting that James Bond is constantly surprised by capable women, and there is a very capable Bond girl this time in Domino Vitalli. Good plotting and pacing. The period appropriate racism and misogyny are dialed back a bit in this entry. Definitely represents the evolution from realistic action of Casino Royals to over the top cinematic hijinx.

Ian Flemings Bond books in general, though fanciful and romantic when compared with the works of John LeCarr or Len Deighton, seem almost mundane next to the continuously escalating madcap extravagance of the films, which lapsed into self-parody for more than a decade in the seventies and early eighties (still ruefully known as The Roger Moore Years).

Flemings James Bond was grounded and practical, a sybarite but also an ascetic, equally fond of sea-island cotton shirts and cold showers. And he had an imagination, which no film has ever managed to portray and no film-maker seems to have noticed.
The James Bond movies relentlessly update the character and his world with the cold war dissolving into the war on terror, new actors taking over the role, the gadgets and gizmos becoming ever grander, the tech ever higher, the tropes and traps more topical. The villains use parkour and iPads now; the text has replaced the cable. This is necessary in the big-ticket Hollywood that feeds the international film market, where everything must take place in the immediate, indeed the imperative, present tense.

But the charm of Flemings novels is the precise reverse of this passion for the up-to-date. Moldering on the used book store shelf, or awkwardly clustered in the cloud-based queue of my Kindle e-reader, they remain unapologetically documents of their own time, endearing period pieces from an era that baby-boomers like myself regard with a fierce wounding nostalgia.
Thunderball is a perfect example, though not the best place to start. begin where Fleming did, with Casino Royale. You won’t regret it.

This is one of the best James Bond books I have read. I enjoyed it. I particularly liked Bond’s description of women drivers.

Women are often meticulous and safe drivers, but they are very seldom first-class. In general, Bond regarded them as a mild hazard and he always gave them plenty of road and was ready for the unpredictable. Four women in a car he regarded as the highest potential danger, and two women nearly as lethal. Women together cannot keep silent in a car, and when women talk they have to look into each others faces. An exchange of words is not enough. They have to see the other persons expression, perhaps to read behind the others words or analyze the reaction to their own. So two women in the front seat of a car constantly distract each others attention from the road ahead and four women are more than doubly dangerous for the driver not only has to hear and see, what her companion is saying but also, for women are like that, what the two behind are talking about.
Ian Fleming, Thunderball

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