Back from the cold

DEVIL MAY CARE By Sebastian Faulks, Penguin, Rs 395

The title page has the name of Sebastian Faulks as the author, but adds the caveat, “writing as Ian Fleming”. It is difficult to decide what to make of this. Does it mean Faulks imitating the style of Fleming or is he following the manner in which Fleming plotted the Bond novels? This uncertainty is one of the charms of the novel. The other obvious attractions are the names of Ian Fleming and James Bond.

To unpack the phrase, “writing as Ian Fleming”, it is necessary to have some idea of what made the original Ian Fleming such a runaway success. There was first the ambience of the Cold War and the decline of England in world affairs. Bond represented that breed of disappearing Englishman who had ruled the waves and the Empire. The celebration of that kind of Englishman was Fleming’s way of saying goodbye to the world that had made him. It captured the fancy of a generation. There were other factors, of course. Bond was smart, masculine and fearless. The narrative was fast-moving with a peppering of violence and derring-do. The stories were often set in exotic locales, had breathtaking gadgets and daring escapes. The stories evoked a secret world with their own codes and rituals; at the head of that world sat a man known only by a letter of the alphabet.

But there was another very significant element that made the Bond novels quite unique. Fleming brought to his stories trivia and asides that were not central to the plot but added to the lure of the stories. These could be information about the best vodka, details of lifestyle, knowledge of card games, the gaming table, golf and even, on one memorable occasion, about the researches of one Jagadish Chandra Bose. What was remarkable was that Fleming was never wrong on the information on varied subjects that he handed out to his readers.

In the Faulks incarnation of Fleming, one misses these asides and trivia. There is one marvellous moment, which successfully situates the novel in real time. The passage reads, “M [Bond’s boss and head of the British secret service] walked to the window and looked towards Regent’s Park. A couple of weeks ago he had spent a morning down the road at Lord’s, watching England on their way to victory over the touring Indians by an innings and 124 runs”. This means the novel is set in the summer of 1967 when the Indian cricket team toured England under the leadership of Tiger Pataudi.

But such asides are rare — references to the Rolling Stones and the prevalence of drugs are two others — in this novel. One misses some of the characteristic Fleming touches, such as the details of the clothes that Bond wears. The villain pitted against is too much of a caricature of Goldfinger, and the tennis match a pale imitation of the golf match between Bond and Goldfinger.

All this is not to take away from the merits of the book. The writing is racy and the style closely follows the way Fleming himself wrote. The fact that Faulks has suppressed his own style to take on that of Fleming is a remarkable achievement.

Above everything else, it has the most important quality of a Bond novel: it cannot be put down. Faulks takes his readers along a rollicking adventure with many, not all, the Bond ingredients. You can have this either shaken or stirred.