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A review by april_does_feral_sometimes
From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming
4.0
I accidentally touched four stars when I intend to rate ‘From Russia with Love’ three, but I will let it stand. The action is wonderful - bombings, car chases, shootings, secret underground grotto, gypsy girl-fight with knives - and actual spying, for once, by Turks.
If you have seen the movie, you will know everything about the plot of the novel, the fifth in the James Bond series. For once, the book and the movie are very closely synced. The hot Russian babe Tatiana Romanova - innocent secretary of SMERSH, Rosa Klebb -ruthless Head of the Operations unit of SMERSH (Otdyel II), and Kronsteen - chess champion and the Head of the Planning Department of SMERSH, are all involved in a nefarious Russian Communist plot to shame James Bond by secretly filming him in a sex tape. The sight of a naked James in action shagging a Russian spy will destroy England’s Secret Service once SMERSH has made the video public, or so goes the thinking in Russia’s spy-assassination department. SMERSH is certain the morale of Bond’s fellow secret agents will plummet, and M will palm his face in shock on seeing Bond’s bobbing ass (James would be the top, naturally, I think). To add to the Secret Service’s pain, SMERSH plans to murder Bond by their best assassin, Donovan Grant, Chief Executioner, after the taping. Grant is to make the ass-asination look like a suicide, since Bond presumably will be supposedly emotionally devastated after he has deflowered Tatiana, an assumed serious and unforgivable breach of British manners for England’s upper-crust and the world. In addition, the bait used as an excuse to bring Tatiana and Bond together, a Russian cipher machine, The Spektor! will be offered up as Tatiana’s passport to defect to England. Tatiana will be given one of The Spektors, filled with explosives, to hand over to Bond once he has arrived in Istanbul, where she wants to meet him. The machine will hopefully explode once in M’s hands (M is Bond’s boss).
Gentle reader, I have no doubts now that the worldly and sophisticated author, and survivor of World War II military operations, Ian Fleming, knew he was writing books of pure silliness and farce despite their surface appearance of playing it straight. Unless any of you Goodreads members who are also British tell me different, I am assuming the Brit’s know young military men have unmarried sex, especially those Brits who are athletic adventurers traveling in Europe on the famous Orient Express. Would the reaction to a sex tape starring a handsome and virile British agent boffing a gorgeous naked woman be a source of national horror, even in 1957? Would James be stripped, so to speak, of his High Table privileges? Let me know.
Meanwhile, Fleming managed to add two more groups of people (in one stroke!) to the list of explicit prejudices the characters in the Bond novels have: intellectuals. Not because they are pointed-headed, gentle reader (pointed heads being an American slander directed at intellectuals). But because all intellectuals are gay! or so the Secret Service believes; and thus the Service rejects hiring intellectuals, especially since the Service believes the Americans will hate British intellectuals. For once, Bond protests against this prejudice, maybe because it is one he does not have very strongly? Or he thinks the benefits outweigh the negatives? Idk. Anyway, Bond appears to like intellectuals even if (or because) they are “pansies soaked in scent”. And bald. I forgot, all the acceptable intellectuals are also assumed to be only the bald gay men, rather than the long-haired gay men. Bond thinks the Americans will be good to go with the bald smelly gay men who are intellectuals, too.
Wait. Did Bond actually toss in yet another backhanded slap at Americans? After five books (start reading the series with book one, [b:Casino Royale|3758|Casino Royale (James Bond, #1)|Ian Fleming|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1497801490s/3758.jpg|2503304], if you dare) of explicit racial slurs, and name-calling and insults directed at most of the nations around the earth, I am definitely having trouble keeping up.
; p
If you have seen the movie, you will know everything about the plot of the novel, the fifth in the James Bond series. For once, the book and the movie are very closely synced. The hot Russian babe Tatiana Romanova - innocent secretary of SMERSH, Rosa Klebb -ruthless Head of the Operations unit of SMERSH (Otdyel II), and Kronsteen - chess champion and the Head of the Planning Department of SMERSH, are all involved in a nefarious Russian Communist plot to shame James Bond by secretly filming him in a sex tape. The sight of a naked James in action shagging a Russian spy will destroy England’s Secret Service once SMERSH has made the video public, or so goes the thinking in Russia’s spy-assassination department. SMERSH is certain the morale of Bond’s fellow secret agents will plummet, and M will palm his face in shock on seeing Bond’s bobbing ass (James would be the top, naturally, I think). To add to the Secret Service’s pain, SMERSH plans to murder Bond by their best assassin, Donovan Grant, Chief Executioner, after the taping. Grant is to make the ass-asination look like a suicide, since Bond presumably will be supposedly emotionally devastated after he has deflowered Tatiana, an assumed serious and unforgivable breach of British manners for England’s upper-crust and the world. In addition, the bait used as an excuse to bring Tatiana and Bond together, a Russian cipher machine, The Spektor! will be offered up as Tatiana’s passport to defect to England. Tatiana will be given one of The Spektors, filled with explosives, to hand over to Bond once he has arrived in Istanbul, where she wants to meet him. The machine will hopefully explode once in M’s hands (M is Bond’s boss).
Gentle reader, I have no doubts now that the worldly and sophisticated author, and survivor of World War II military operations, Ian Fleming, knew he was writing books of pure silliness and farce despite their surface appearance of playing it straight. Unless any of you Goodreads members who are also British tell me different, I am assuming the Brit’s know young military men have unmarried sex, especially those Brits who are athletic adventurers traveling in Europe on the famous Orient Express. Would the reaction to a sex tape starring a handsome and virile British agent boffing a gorgeous naked woman be a source of national horror, even in 1957? Would James be stripped, so to speak, of his High Table privileges? Let me know.
Meanwhile, Fleming managed to add two more groups of people (in one stroke!) to the list of explicit prejudices the characters in the Bond novels have: intellectuals. Not because they are pointed-headed, gentle reader (pointed heads being an American slander directed at intellectuals). But because all intellectuals are gay! or so the Secret Service believes; and thus the Service rejects hiring intellectuals, especially since the Service believes the Americans will hate British intellectuals. For once, Bond protests against this prejudice, maybe because it is one he does not have very strongly? Or he thinks the benefits outweigh the negatives? Idk. Anyway, Bond appears to like intellectuals even if (or because) they are “pansies soaked in scent”. And bald. I forgot, all the acceptable intellectuals are also assumed to be only the bald gay men, rather than the long-haired gay men. Bond thinks the Americans will be good to go with the bald smelly gay men who are intellectuals, too.
Wait. Did Bond actually toss in yet another backhanded slap at Americans? After five books (start reading the series with book one, [b:Casino Royale|3758|Casino Royale (James Bond, #1)|Ian Fleming|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1497801490s/3758.jpg|2503304], if you dare) of explicit racial slurs, and name-calling and insults directed at most of the nations around the earth, I am definitely having trouble keeping up.
; p