Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

In the Los Angeles Times, Tim Rutten says that the latest James Bond novel "by an Ian Fleming impersonator owes more to the cinematic 007 tradition than to the 'shaken, not stirred' fellow envisioned by his creator." The curious thing about Rutten's review is that most of it is devoted to the "witty and sophisticated, cultivated but unpretentious" style of Fleming's originals. He only mentions Devil May Care after we've ploughed through 1,150 of his words. And then all he does is compare the first and last lines of Sebastian Faulks's work with the first and last lines of Casino Royale. Nice work if you can get it, but not good enough.

At the Washington Post, Patrick Anderson, "whose e-mail address is mondaythrillers@aol.com", gives us "Ian Fleming's Agent of Little Change". The headline is enough. What disturbs Anderson most is that Faulks's Bond "indulges in the brand-name snobbery that has awed us common folk for more than half a century." Says Anderson:

"He smokes Chesterfields and cigarettes ordered from Turkey; he drinks Johnnie Walker Black and other expensive whiskeys, admires Chateau Batailley 1958 and finds all soft drinks 'more or less repellent.' He dislikes croissants and diplomats, loves good marmalade, carries a Walther PPK, drives a Bentley Continental with an Arnott supercharger and brings Miss Moneypenny boxes of Perugina Baci chocolates from Rome. We're advised that good caviar 'should smell of the sea but never the fish' and, in the best 'shaken, not stirred' tradition, that black pepper should be 'cracked, not ground.'"

One of the main characteristics of the spy Ian Fleming created was his complete materialism, but it was a materialism of exquisite taste. In Thunderball, the enemy is the stylish Count Lippe and when Bond breaks into his apartment he finds that the villain's shirts are made by Charvet on the Place Vendôme in Paris. Proust had his shirts made there. So did JFK. Anderson's disdain for Bond's brands exposes his utter unsuitability for the task of reviewing a Bond book. Next please!