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Holistic Guidance - Devil May Care
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List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $16.47
Your Save: $ 8.48 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Doubleday
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780385524285
ISBN: 0385524285
Label: Doubleday
Manufacturer: Doubleday
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 278
Publication Date: 2008-05-28
Publisher: Doubleday
Release Date: 2008-05-28
Studio: Doubleday
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Editorial Reviews:
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Bond is back. With a vengeance.
Devil May Care is a masterful continuation of the James Bond legacy–an electrifying new chapter in the life of the most iconic spy of literature and film, written to celebrate the centenary of Ian Fleming’s birth on May 28, 1908.
An Algerian drug runner is savagely executed in the desolate outskirts of Paris. This seemingly isolated event leads to the recall of Agent 007 from his sabbatical in Rome and his return to the world of intrigue and danger where he is most at home. The head of MI6, M, assigns him to shadow the mysterious Dr. Julius Gorner, a power-crazed pharmaceutical magnate, whose wealth is exceeded only by his greed. Gorner has lately taken a disquieting interest in opiate derivatives, both legal and illegal, and this urgently bears looking into.
Bond finds a willing accomplice in the shape of a glamorous Parisian named Scarlett Papava. He will need her help in a life-and-death struggle with his most dangerous adversary yet, as a chain of events threaten to lead to global catastrophe. A British airliner goes missing over Iraq. The thunder of a coming war echoes in the Middle East. And a tide of lethal narcotics threatens to engulf a Great Britain in the throes of the social upheavals of the late sixties.
Picking up where Fleming left off, Sebastian Faulks takes Bond back to the height of the Cold War in a story of almost unbearable pace and tension. Devil May Care not only captures the very essence of Fleming’s original novels but also shows Bond facing dangers with a powerful relevance to our own times.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The devil may care - I sure don't!
Comment: How much do I think of this novel? Not much. So little in fact, that I've just put the copy I bought for myself for sale on Ebay.
I really wanted to enjoy this novel, but in my opinion it just doesn't entertain the way a Bond novel should. In fact I didn't find it entertaining at all. "Writing as Ian Fleming" - rubbish.
The first time I tried to read this book I stopped after about forty pages. I realised that at no point during that time had the book felt like a Bond novel, or had been entertaining.
A few weeks later I thought I'd give it another try. This time after about 80 pages I gave up for good. The book quite simply is uninspiring, and I had both total indifference to both the plot and the characters.
While not all of Raymond Benson's ideas of what to do with the Bond novels worked, at least the majority of his novels were entertaining. This in comparison is quite simply does not have enough of a Bond feel to it. It's no Goldfinger, or even Colonel Sun, that's for sure.
Since other authors, like Clive Cussler, can consistently turn out interesting and entertaining novels, there's really no excuse for uninspired writing. Over and out...
Customer Rating:
Summary: NOT WORTHY OF THE FLEMING NAME
Comment: Allowing Faulks to write "as Ian Fleming" was obviously a public relations gimmick - it's certainly not based on merit. The first half of this novel is competent but undistinquised - in no way superior to the pastiches by John Gardner or others. But the second half falls apart. I had the feeling Faulks' original manuscript was 20 or 30 thousand words short, and the publisher needed padding. The final 1/3 of the book was absolutely pointless. In all, an annoying read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: DEVIL MAY CARE
Comment: I HAVE NOT YET RECEIVED THIS PRODUCT - ORDER NO. 102=3124131-8290667.
IT SHOULD HAVE REACHED ME BY 09/02/08 AT THE LATEST.
PLEASE TRACE THIS ITEM FOR ME OR REFUND ME THE MONEY INCLUDING POSTAGE AND PACKING AS SOON AS POSSIBLEDevil May Care
Customer Rating:
Summary: Bond. James Bond.
Comment: This is a new novel featuring 007- and the third author to write a Bond novel since Fleming passed away.
In some ways I would say this was an astonishingly good emulation of the originals. The author quite understood whose style he was emulating, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me he'd written this one with a stack of the Fleming Bond novels cracked open with sentences diagrammed and plot elements carefully analyzed on every page.
On the other hand, though, Mr. Faulks' attention to the stylistic and plot specifics of the earlier Bond novels has created one problem: this one wouldn't translate forward of the late 60s at all easily, as the plot revolves around situations present in that era, which no longer exist in our world. The world of Fleming's Bond is very specific to the era of their publication- the Cold War was unfolding in a very particular way based on the geopolitics of the time.
Overall, though, I found this book a fun read, and a more than fitting 100th birthday present for Mr. Fleming.
Customer Rating:
Summary: At Long Last, the Real James Bond is Back
Comment: 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
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