James Bond Goes Noir
The tenth James Bond book (and 9th novel) is a departure from the rest of the series, and it starts intriguingly:
“I was running away. I was running away from England, from my childhood, from the winter, from a sequence of untidy, unattractive love-affairs, from the few sticks of furniture and jumble of overworn clothes that my London life had collected around me; and I was running away from drabness, fustiness, snobbery, the claustrophobia of close horizons and from my inability, although I am quite an attractive rat, to make headway in the rat-race. In fact, I was running away from almost everything except the law.“
The entire book is written in the first person, from the Bond Girl’s POV!
At first, that promising start reminded me of Dany Longo, the first person narrator of one of the most fantastically named books I know of: Sebastian Japrisot’s The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun.
Like that book, The Spy Who Loved Me is written by a male author from the first person POV of a young woman. Both books take pains to describe their narrators’ love lives before the main action. In Japrisot’s book, that serves to set up the plot, in Fleming’s it serves to show Viv Michel’s character arc, where she’s coming from and where, hopefully, she’s going to. There’s a short section, when Viv seems to have learned from the failed romances of her time in England. She resolves to be strong and independent, and not be kicked around anymore.
Enter James Bond
When gangsters turn up at the motel where she is staying alone, she tries to stand up to them, but is overpowered. Fair enough. There are two of them, after all, and they’re hardened criminals. But that defeat serves to turn her into a wilting wallflower, so much so that when James Bond finally, and coincidentally, turns up in Chapter Ten, she is almost instantly smitten. From that point on, the central drama of these two crooks is leached, because Bond is so confident that, even depite a slight set-back, the end is never in doubt. In terms of Bond’s backstory, he’s taking a long road trip after the awful events of Thunderball, his previous case. But the real shame is the dent his appearance puts in Viv’s determination to be strong and independent. Instead, she willingly accept the role of helpless maiden to the brave knight-protector.
There’s even an uncomfortable moment when Fleming writes (from Viv’s POV, so that’s presumably OK!) ‘All women love semi-rape.’ Charming.
This character-reversal of Viv’s is real shame, because the part in the motel where she is alone with the two gangsters was well written and very noirish in its claustrophobic intensity. It’s a shame Ian Fleming didn’t take a complete break from Bond, write The Spy Who Loved Me as a standalone novel and figure out a way for Viv to defeat the villains herself. It would have been a better story and a better novel.
The Spy Who Loved Me v The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun
If, like me, you’re reading your way through all the Ian Fleming James Bond books in order, you’ll probably read The Spy Who Loved Me. But, honestly, I’d just read The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun. It’s a better title, a better female protagonist, and a much better story.
Rating: 66%
Strong Women in Thrillers
For better-depicted female leads in thrillers, you might also enjoy:
No Way To Live, my upcoming thriller about a London gangland boss fighting treachery and betrayal in her ranks
or
Do Not Keep Silent, my Hong Kong-set novel about a protester prepared to sacrifice everything for her beliefs…until she falls in love.
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