Audio Book 8: Death Echoes for Bond

You can probably thank Bill Paley for For Your Eyes Only.

During the summer of 1958, CBS commissioned Ian Fleming to write a TV series based on James Bond (partly inspired by the success of the 1954 one-shot CBS television adaptation of Fleming’s first novel, Casino Royale).

Fleming wrote outlines for several episodes before CBS dropped the idea. CBS Chairman of the Board Bill Paley’s biographer Lewis J. Paper reported that Paley “…rejected any suggestion that the network make use of Ian Fleming’s stories about James Bond, believing that the American public would have no interest in the escapades of a British spy.” Not Paley’s best moment.

In 1959, working at his home Goldeneye in Jamaica, Fleming adapted four of the TV plots into short stories. Fleming biographer Andrew Lycett noted that “…Ian’s mood of weariness and self-doubt was beginning to affect his writing,” as evidenced in Bond’s internal monologue of thoughts.

The short stories became Fleming’s 1960 Bond book, For Your Eyes Only.

The title story, according to Wiki, was originally called Man’s Work and was “…set in Vermont, where Fleming had spent a number of summers at his friend Ivar Bryce’s Black Hollow Farm, which became the model for von Hammerstein's hideaway, Echo Lake. The name of the villain of the story, von Hammerstein, was taken from General Baron Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord (1878–1943), one of Hitler’s opponents. Fleming also considered calling the story Death Leaves an Echo and based the story on Rough Justice, which was to be episode three of the television series.”

The other stories in that collection — Quantum of Solace, Risico and The Hildebrand Rarity — are not included in this BBC adaptation, but two later stories are.

The Property of a Lady was written in 1963 as a commission for Sotheby’s for use in their annual journal. Fleming was disappointed in the tale, a bit of business about a double agent who is to be paid by KGB through the auction of Peter Carl Fabergé’s “Emerald Sphere.” Of more enduring interest was The Living Daylights, published in 1962 as Berlin Escape. Bond gets a surprise, and is inspired to bitter moral musings, when he is assigned sniper duty to help British agent 272 escape from East Berlin by killing a KGB assassin codenamed Trigger. 

Audio Novel 4: James Bond in Sin City

Signet paperback art by Barye Phillips

Bond versus the American vulgarians — that’s Diamonds Are Forever, Ian Fleming’s fourth 007 thriller, published in 1956 and inspired by a Sunday Times article on diamond smuggling.

For this young American reader, the USA wasn’t as exotic a setting as a casino “near the mouth of the Somme” or Jamaica or even England, and loudly dressed American gangsters seemed laughable next to the elegant, imposing menace of Le Chiffre or Mr. Big or Sir Hugo Drax.

That said, it’s a perfectly serviceable Bond adventure, charged with Fleming’s early verve, a couple of chilling gay killers named Wint and Kidd and a likeable, tough, brassy heroine, Tiffany Case. A survivor of gang rape who works as a smuggler for the Spangled Mob, Tiffany becomes the second woman with whom Bond falls in love during the course of the novels. We learn only later that Tiffany, finding Bond too difficult to live with, returned to the U.S. with an American military officer, whom she probably married.

The novel includes a sybaritic setting, Las Vegas, that seems perfect for Bond from the moment when, with some amusement, he steps off an airliner to breathe pure oxygen from one of those American gizmos.

Never out of print, the novel got an early boost in November 1956 when the man from No. 10, Sir Anthony Eden, made a much-advertised visit to Fleming’s Goldeneye estate to recuperate following the Suez Crisis. It was adapted into a comic strip in 1959-60 and, in 1971, became the basis for Sean Connery’s last “official” film as 007. Jill St. John joined him, making an excellent Tiffany Case.

Here it is as a BBC radio drama starring Toby Stephens as 007. 

Audio Novel 11: Bond's Triumph and Tragedy

While the first James Bond film, Dr. No, was being filmed in Jamaica, Ian Fleming was nearby in his house Goldeneye writing the 10^th Bond novel, On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

In spite of — or because of — Fleming’s popular success, some condescending critics took shots at him. Although he laughed the remarks off, they must have smarted, and Fleming continually tried to develop his protagonist and refine his writing. In OHMSS, for the first time, Bond reflects on childhood memories and not only finds a woman he can love, but marries her.

Preceded by Thunderball and followed by You Only Live Twice, this middle novel in the Blofeld trilogy would establish Ernst Stavro Blofeld, SPECTRE’s founder, as Bond’s archenemy.

Published in April 1963, the book sold more than 60,000 copies in the first month. The 1969 film version stayed relatively true to the novel, featured one of John Barry’s best scores, and has subsequently acquired a reputation as one of the best Bond movies.

Here it is as a BBC radio drama starring Toby Stephens as 007.

Audio Novel 5: From Britain With Love

“From Russia With Love” has the distinction of being what many consider to be Ian Fleming’s best Bond novel, what many also consider to be the best Bond film, and the novel that — when named as one his favorites by President Kennedy — propelled James Bond to permanent international stardom.

Here it is as a BBC radio drama starring Toby Stephens as 007. The British secret agent was never closer to meeting his maker and, in fact, at one point, an irritated and discouraged Fleming planned to leave him dead at the end of the novel. You’ll see how close he came.

Audio Novel 7: The Man With the Midas Touch

Art by Isdailic

Sir Ian McKellen as Auric Goldfinger? Why the hell not? Here's another BBC radio play of an Ian Fleming novel, this time "Goldfinger," the most famous of the James Bond tales.
The seventh Ian Fleming novel, published in 1959, became the third Bond film in 1964. The film "Dr. No" was a hit in 1962 and "From Russia With Love" a bigger hit in 1963. But with "Goldfinger," the James Bond mega-hit was born, with lines around the block for tickets and 24-hour screenings.
My friend and mentor Elleston Trevor — creator of the taut Quiller spy series — thought Fleming's novel ridiculous, and it does have a couple of implausible turns, even by Fleming's standards (why in hell does Goldfinger keep Bond around as a "secretary?")
But finally, there's really no arguing with Ian Fleming's golden touch, is there?

Audio Novel 6: The Scheherazade Sound of Dr. No

In his 1958 novel "Dr. No," the veteran gambler Ian Fleming finally tipped his hand.
Prior to this, his sixth James Bond thriller, Fleming had been pretending, perhaps even to himself, that his novels were about espionage, a field with which he'd become familiar as a naval intelligence officer during World War II. But Bond was made for sunnier wars than John Le Carre's "Cold" one, and Fleming revealed that when he sent escapist hero 007 to his own favorite destination for escape, Jamaica.
Here, the novel is dramatized as a BBC radio play, complete with John Barry music.
This is the novel in which Fleming finally makes it clear that Bond's adventures are mythic, iconic on a Joseph Campbell scale. Literally, Bond faces a Fu Manchu villain, a naked damsel in distress and a fire-breathing dragon. And the way Fleming effectively fogs over the obvious fairy tale with brand-name verisimilitude is part of what gives this story its persistent charm...

Audio Novel 12: James Bond 7777

Now here's a find — the 1964 Ian Fleming novel "You Only Live Twice" done as a BBC radio play. The thriller is much different than and superior to the film. For one thing, it opens with James Bond cracking up. 
Even in ill health in his last years, with his powers failing, Fleming was able to cook up a properly mythic plot turning on the Japanese penchant for suicide being exploited by the sadistic "Doctor Shatterhand" in his fatal paradise. 

Always reaching for a surprise for his readers, Fleming had married Bond off to a countess at the end of the previous novel, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." He opens this novel with the indomitable Bond facing a nervous breakdown because his archenemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld had murdered Tracy Bond within hours of their wedding. Suffering fits of emptiness and deep depression, Bond sits in the park and watches ants, waiting for his inevitable notice of termination by the British Secret Service.
And his chief M does yank Bond's double-oh number, but only to replace it with the code number 7777. M has one last-ditch, impossible mission for Bond. The secret agent will either end his life in Japan, or live twice...
Creator and creation merged frequently, and here again as this penultimate Bond novel became the last published during Fleming's lifetime.