Blogging Ottinger (tim)Live and Let Die
Another bond book by Ian Fleming. I’m really learning to love Fleming’s work. It’s not influential and deep like CS Lewis or Augustine or even Orson Scott Card, nor quite as gritty (and twisty) a mystery writer as Alistair McLean. But it’s descriptive, moody, and interesting. The famed bond gadgets like cars that turn into subs and cutting lasers in wrist-watches are completely missing from the novels. Rather than fighting world-dominating baddies, the books are generally about taking down criminals. Not earth-destroying, bomb-toting, ecology-poisoning madmen, but skilled spies and criminal organizations.
Essentially, if you know Bond from the movies, you don’t know Bond. You would like the book version better, even though I also enjoy the movies.
This one is great. It’s all placed in Jamaica and the US (not Haiti as in the movie). There is no voodoo cult and no obeah man. Nor does Bond escaped relatively unharmed from being dragged over coral reefs. This is an interesting book of intrigue and violence and Bond ultimately stopping a very bad man who ran a very big crime cartel. I could see reading it again, and I generally never repeat a fiction book. It’s not a long book, and not intellectually challenging, but it’s fun and a mighty good pleasure read.
