Carte Blache reviewed

[The Sweeney]

Not so good review from The Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/ma ... ver-review

And a more positive one from The Telegraph - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/hay- ... eview.html

[JackWade CIA]

Disheartening. Then it is hard to redo what Ian Fleming did naturally with one stoke of his pen. I don't know if any of the authors hired since Fleming's death have done justice to the original series. The new books are a way for Fleming's heirs to make money off the fame of the movies series. I don't think continuing the book series was necessary.

[Blowfeld]

The books arrived in today's post. I have been looking forward to it, have you bought a copy Sween?

[The Sweeney]

The books arrived in today's post. I have been looking forward to it, have you bought a copy Sween?

Yes mine arrived through the post today too. I actually forgot that I pre-ordered it, so it was a nice surprise....

[Thunderpussy]

J Deaver was on BBC Radio 4's "Front row " saying he had made Bond a non-smoker because the smell of smoke can give you away in stealth ops, they leave ash and DNA on the stubs, I thought it might of been because he didn't have to describe large sections of Bond running to office doorways to light up.

[Blowfeld]

J Deaver was on BBC Radio 4's "Front row " saying he had made Bond a non-smoker because the smell of smoke can give you away in stealth ops, they leave ash and DNA on the stubs, I thought it might of been because he didn't have to describe large sections of Bond running to office doorways to light up.

That is gritty realism for you

[Blowfeld]

The books arrived in today's post. I have been looking forward to it, have you bought a copy Sween?

Yes mine arrived through the post today too. I actually forgot that I pre-ordered it, so it was a nice surprise....

I pre-ordered it too. Almost cancelled it a few weeks ago, glad I didn't althou I do not have the time to read it at the moment. A nice surprise to find I saved £2.83 A better deal than was offered on Stiggys book

I'd be interested what you make of the book Sweeney.

[Blowfeld]

Jun 4, 2011 3:09 PM | By Tymon Smith
[spoil]Much stealth and secrecy characterised the simultaneous international launches of Carte Blanche, the new James Bond novel written by American thriller king Jeffery Deaver. In Cape Town there was special interest, as it turns out that more than half of the novel is set in the city.

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Of course, Bond being your archetypal colonial tourist, his idea of Cape Town is a mix of strange ideas and blatant advertorial that creates a place of fine hotels, wines and beautiful women with fiery eyes who work for the SAPS. There are name-drops for several wineries and a thinly disguised version of the Cape Grace Hotel, renamed the Table Mountain Hotel.

Upon arrival at the airport in Cape Town, Bond is greeted by the sight of people in "traditional African garb: men's dashikis and brocade sets and, for the women, kente kaftans and head wraps, all brightly coloured. Muslim robes and scarves were present as well, and a few saris". Following this colourful retinue, 007 has the chance to ruminate on the fascinating clicks in African languages: "Khoisan - spoken by the original inhabitants of this part of Africa - made the most use of it, although Zulus and Xhosas also clicked. Bond had tried and found it impossible to replicate."

This confusion leads Bond to surmise, throughout his stay in Cape Town, that when anyone speaks in an African language, it's either "Zulu or Xhosa". He never manages to tell them apart.

He's helped on the SA leg of his hunt for international terrorists by the sensual, fiery-eyed Captain Bheka Jordaan and her colleagues, Warrant Officer Kwelane Nkosi and Sergeant Mbalula. Stepping into the jewellers at the Gardens Centre, Bond, following the advice of his SAPS friends, swaps his Rolex for a gaudier Breitling in an effort to help cement his undercover identity as an Afrikaner mercenary from Durban named Gene Theron.

Ready for action, the intrepid, square-jawed secret agent stays at the Table Mountain Hotel, a six-storey building in Green Point, "which could not quite disguise its colonial roots - though it didn't try very hard; you could see them clearly in the meticulous landscaping presently being tended by a number of diligent workers, the delicate but firm reminder on placards about the dining-room dress code, the spotless white uniforms of the demure, ever-present staff, the rattan furniture on the sweeping veranda overlooking the bay".

At a fundraising dinner at the less-than-impressive Lodge Club, Bond meets Felicity Willing (she jokes that at university she was nicknamed Felicity Willful), who he takes to dinner over a bottle of Rustenberg Peter Barlow Cabernet 2005 before taking her to bed at the Table Mountain Hotel. Miss Willing invites Bond to spend a weekend with her at an inn in Franschhoek boasting a Michelin-star-rated restaurant, but things go awry and Winelands 007 never materialises.

Later in the book, after an encounter in the Bo-Kaap with a Zulu, where he learns the meaning of the term Ugogo and is offered bobotie and Zulu beer, Bond stops at an eatery where he feasts on sosaties, yellow rice and morogo, but declines the offer of mopani worms. He does, however, manage to consume a bottle of Three Cape Ladies before a final shoot-out on the Twelve Apostles ridge and one last glass of Graham Beck Cuvée Clive sparkling wine in the company of Captain Jordaan, who remains to the end immune to his charms.

And as Bond learns that khotso means "peace" and wonders if he'll ever settle down, Cape Town and the world bid him and his Rolex farewell on a United Emirates first-class flight to his next, as yet unknown, destination.[/spoil]

http://www.timeslive.co.za/lifestyle/bo ... -in-Africa

[Blowfeld]

The author of the latest 007 novel shares tricks of the espionage trade, from losing a tail to forging signatures
[spoil]One of the greatest pleasures I get as a novelist is researching a field I wasn't previously familiar with, then incorporating the resulting material into my novels.

For "Carte Blanche," the newest James Bond novel, I soaked up a number of fascinating factoids about tradecraft—the subdued term for the techniques of espionage. My knowledge will have faded in a few years, but in the short term, I'm a bit of a spymaster. I thought I might share a few of the more useful tricks of the trade, in case you find yourself tapped (recruited) by a handler (the spy who supervises field agents) to help out the pros.

Apparently this happens quite frequently. At least according to Hollywood.

• To be a spy, you don't need to break into top-secret facilities, climb through air ducts and make your way through laser beam fields. Yes, agents do some of that acrobatic stuff, as well as sit in front of really neat high-def monitors, a la Jack Bauer in "24," while vacuuming up cellphone calls and emails. But a huge amount of "product," as intelligence is called, comes from open sources, information available to everyone, found in newspapers, on TV, in unclassified government, corporate and nonprofit reports and from observations in public. You can be sure that somebody in Russia's SVR, one of the KGB's successor agencies, is jotting down notes about this article even as you read it.

For those who've always wanted the style and skills of James Bond or one of the Bond girls, a "spy school" offers classes in everything from hand-to-hand combat to deception detection. WSJ's Andy Jordan takes his camera to a session.

• Think you're being tailed? If you're on foot in the city, never look behind you; the agent will quickly hand off to another member of the surveillance team. Find a commercial street with stores or restaurants whose entrances have large, angled windows. They provide perfect mirrors to get a glimpse of a tail. Take several random turns to verify that you're the target, but be sure to stop at several stores on your route and make actual purchases to justify your complicated route and convince your tail that you are oblivious to him.

What you do when you lead him into a dark alleyway is your own business.

• Are you the tailer rather than the tailee? If you're conducting surveillance or following somebody who is frequently adopting disguises to throw you off, remember three distinctive things about the target: height, proportion of shoulder width to size of head and angle of foot (outward or inward pointing). Even if the target changes clothes, makeup, hats, posture and hair style, those three characteristics can't be altered credibly or consistently.

• If you need to disguise yourself, remember that less is more. "Mission: Impossible" rubber masks and prosthetics only work at considerable distance. For face-to-face disguises, the most important trick is to use a dental apparatus to give you bad teeth. The attention of the person you're trying to fool will automatically be drawn to your mouth, even if they try to maintain eye contact.
[SPY] Everett Collection


• To forge a subject's signature—to, say, sign a document as part of a misinformation assignment—copy it upside down. If you try to forge handwriting without inverting it, your own script will affect the results.

• Dead drops are locations where one agent leaves an item, like classified documents or cash, for another to retrieve later. Usually the objects are left in a CD, that is, a concealment device. Outdoors, your best CDs are objects naturally found on the ground and of little interest to passersby. They're called "sticks and bricks" because that's often what they are: hollowed out branches and fake stones. Freeze-dried dead animals are popular too. Just make sure there's no one around to wonder why you're dropping a dead rat into your attaché case.

• If you think your dead drop has been compromised and is under surveillance, go on the offensive against the enemy; try a Trojan Horse operation. Leave a double concealment device, one with two hidden compartments, at the drop. The CD's first compartment, which can be opened, should contain a large sum of money or secret documents (stolen from the enemy). In the second chamber, which can't be opened, put a tracker or listening device. Once the enemy agents take it back to their safe house, it's sure to be scanned for radio or data transmissions; make sure the unit has timing software so that it will not start sending signals for two or three days.
[SPY] Everett Collection

• A good way to get a listening device into the home of a target is to adopt an NOC (non-official cover) as a salesman—of household items, for instance. Follow the target's spouse to the grocery store and gently ding his or her car with your own. Apologize profusely and say that you'd prefer not to report the accident to your insurance company. Give the spouse much more money than it would cost to fix the damage (cash is too suspicious; use a check from an account set up under your NOC). Then further make nice by giving away one of your samples, like an expensive salt and pepper set, which will, of course, have a transmitter inside—again, timed for delayed transmission.

• If you're concerned that someone is tapping your mobile or land line, you can always come up with a prearranged vocabulary of code words to convey messages in the course of what seems to be an innocent conversation. Or use silent calling, in which a certain interval of silence between pick-up and hang-up conveys a message. Five seconds means to do X, 10 seconds is Y, etc.

• Who hasn't spent sleepless nights worried about double agents? Moles have existed since the profession of espionage began. Motivation is the prime criterion in deciding if someone spying for you is legitimate. Apply the MICE test: Is he working for you because of the Money, out of Ideology, because he's being Coerced or because of his Ego? If he doesn't score high on any of those measures, he could be a double.

• If you're a spy, you have to communicate, sharing with your handler both operational information and the product you've gathered. Most spies avoid public meetings, and instead use covert communications (covcom) or clandestine communications (clancom) to swap information.

Covcom occurs when the message itself is detectable (though possibly encrypted), but the sender and recipient are unknown. Classic techniques include using anonymous email accounts and broadcasting information via radio. Clancom is when the message itself is hidden. Steganography is the art of hiding information, and the practice is thousands of years old. In the mid-20th century microdots were the preferred form of steganography, and spy agencies' technical services departments vied to outdo their opponents in making the messages smaller and smaller.

Today spies use computer steganography, in which the binary codes of photos, videos or music are modified to contain digital messages. To the naked eye and ear, these seem to be just any other digital media. But after being downloaded by the recipient, they can be quickly processed by special software, and the message extracted.

You might have noticed that I've neglected to offer any insight into one particular aspect of espionage. In reality, spies rarely assassinate anyone. Accordingly, and for the sake of personal liability, I thought I'd avoid helpful hints I've learned about targeted killings. If you really need some help in that department, the best I'll offer is that drone strikes seem to work pretty well.
—Mr. Deaver is the author of 27 novels. "Carte Blanche" is due out June 14.[/spoil]

June 14th!? I was under the impression it was out in the states already?

[Blowfeld]

[spoil]By Angela McGee

Comment Speech Bubble Have your say(0)

American thriller writer Jeffery Deaver, creator of quadriplegic detective Lincoln Rhymes, might seem an unlikely choice to write the latest James Bond novel.

Although he has racked up a number of awards, seen his books turned into films (including The Bone Collector starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie) and topped the bestseller lists in more than 150 countries, when it comes down to it, can an American really get inside the head of a suave, womanising, Rolex-wearing, Bentley-driving British spy?

Well, yes. He can and he does.

Whereas Faulks’s Bond stayed firmly rooted in the Sixties and the Cold War, Deaver’s Bond is brought slap-bang up to date. He’s in his 30s, an Afghanistan veteran who is offered work with a mysterious new department which works outside of M15, M16 and the Ministry of Defence and whose aim is “to protect the realm by any means necessary”.

The action begins three years after he joined. GCHQ has picked up two encrypted messages: the first refers to an incident due to take place in five days time and cause thousands of casualties. The second, from the same person, refers to a meeting at 8pm outside Novi Sad in Serbia.

ì
Carte Blanche by Jeffery Deaver
î

4/5

What the incident is, where it is happening and who sent the message, no one knows but a complete and utter lack of information with absolutely nothing to go on won’t stop 007 so he heads off into the fray to save the world. The baddie, in a fabulous 21st-century manner, is the owner of a worldwide recycling business, whose love of all things decaying has clearly sent him off the deep end.

With a travel itinerary that Fleming would be proud of and that fans have come to expect, Bond’s quest takes him jet-setting across the world, from Dubai and Serbia to South Africa. With “Q” department on top form, there are more gadgets than you can shake a stick at, the best of which is the iQPhone, a smartphone loaded up with spy apps.


Deaver admits to being a massive Ian Fleming fan, reading his first Bond, On His Majesty’s Secret Service, when he was nine. While much of Carte Blanche remains true to Fleming’s books (the gadgets, the tailored suits, M and Moneypenny), he has made one massive change: Deaver has finally dumped Bond’s outdated misogyny. Yes, he still has an eye for the ladies (“she sat forward, crossing her legs and Bond thought he heard the appealing rustle of nylon”) and he shares some steamy scenes with Felicity Willing. However, he also turns down his colleague Ophelia Maidenstone, a woman he cares for, recently dumped by her fiancé.

Deaver’s enthusiasm for Bond comes through on every page and he puts the gift for plotting that has garnered him such massive popularity to superb use here. So Carte Blanche is excellent fun, a great read and Jeffrey Deaver has breathed new life into an old favourite.

Read more: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/250 ... ery-Deaver[/spoil]

[Blowfeld]

Jeffrey Deaver tries to modernize James Bond.
By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney[spoil]There is a ritual towards the end of most James Bond adventures when the villain gloats over 007's impending death. "Well, Mr Bond," says his canasta-playing foe Auric Goldfinger in the novel Goldfinger, after having drugged Bond, trussed him up and whisked him away on a hijacked aircraft bound for the Soviet bloc. "So Fate wished us to play the game out. But this time, Mr Bond, there cannot possibly be a card up your sleeve. Ha!"

Goldfinger, of course, is wrong. Bond always has a card up his sleeve. He never dies. His creator, Ian Fleming, tired of what he called "Bonds and blondes and bombs", tried to kill him off in the fifth Bond novel, From Russia With Love, published in 1957, which concludes with Smersh agent Rosa Klebb kicking Bond in the right calf with her deadly poisoned-stiletto boot. "Bond pivoted slowly on his heel and crashed headlong to the wine-red floor" are the final words.

It was to prove a brief exit, however. Spurred by Hollywood interest in adapting 007 for the screen, Fleming revived him in Doctor No the following year. In 1962 the novel was adapted into the first Bond movie starring Sean Connery. The spy was transformed into an international film action hero, a cold war fantasy of suavely lethal British power who gripped popular imagination at precisely the moment Britain lost the last significant remnants of its empire. Similarly, Bond's new lease of life in cinemas in the 1960s came at a time when Fleming was nearing the end of his.
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Fleming died of a heart attack in 1964, aged 56. Almost 50 years later Bond is still going strong, not just in multiplexes—the 23rd Bond film, as yet unnamed, is being made with Daniel Craig reprising the role of 007, directed by Sam Mendes—but also as a literary character. There have been 23 official Bond novels written since Fleming's death, produced by five different authors. The latest is Carte Blanche, by the American suspense writer Jeffery Deaver. It comes after Sebastian Faulks's Devil May Care, whose publication in 2008 coincided with the centenary of Fleming's birth.

Faulks's addition to the Bond oeuvre is set in the 1960s and follows in the footsteps of You Only Live Twice, the last novel Fleming published before his death. Written by an author known for literary rather than genre fiction, it was an impeccably observed and often very funny pastiche of Fleming's style, from a gourmandising interest in fine food and wine to the bizarrely grotesque baddie that Bond is sent to hunt down. "'His left hand,' said M, sitting down again, and staring Bond squarely in the eye. 'It's a monkey's paw.' 'What?' 'An extremely rare congenital deformity.'" Even the six weeks Faulks took to dash off Devil May Care had the authentic tang of Fleming, who each year would repair for two months to his Jamaican villa to compose a new book.

Rather than write a period piece like Faulks, Deaver has updated Bond to a present day of satellite surveillance and the war on terror. 007's favourite gadget is a mobile phone that "resembled an iPhone" and comes packed with snazzy Q-designed apps for spycraft. He is described as roughly 30 years old, which gives him a birth date of around 1980. It is disconcerting to realise that, according to Carte Blanche's chronology, this new Bond must have been a contemporary of Prince William's at Eton.

Deaver's novel signals a new phase in Bond's post-Fleming life. Commissioned by Fleming's estate—the UK-based Ian Fleming Publications—the Illinois-born 61-year-old is a successful thriller writer with a mass market readership of his own. He specialises in serial killer mysteries, often featuring detective Lincoln Rhyme, a brilliant New York City Police Department (NYPD) criminologist who was left quadriplegic after an accident but still solves crimes through his genius for forensics. The first Rhyme book, The Bone Collector, was turned into a 1999 film starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie.

Bond is not the only literary character to enjoy an active life after his creator's death. 007's mini-me Jason Bourne has thrived since Robert Ludlum died in 2001, appearing in a series of novels written by veteran thriller writer Eric Van Lustbader. (The latest, The Bourne Dominion, has been provocatively published at the same time as Carte Blanche.) Later this year Sherlock Holmes, who has appeared in countless tributes and adaptations since Arthur Conan Doyle's death in 1930, is due to make his first authorised modern appearance in a new novel, The House of Silk, written by the British children's novelist Anthony Horowitz.

Literary estates that license so-called "continuation" novels are invariably motivated by money. In Bond's case, the success of the 007 films has added an extra impetus to keeping him going in books. In doing so the Fleming estate has also shown much the same economic instincts towards Bond as those of his creator.

Fleming's family background lay in banking and, although he proved a disastrous stockbroker during a brief stint in the City—the escapist trade of journalism was a better match—he showed reflex commercial skill in exploiting Bond for all the character was worth. In 1958 a daily comic strip serialising the novels began appearing in the Daily Express, then in its Lord Beaverbrook-owned pomp. Fleming also strove unsuccessfully to adapt 007 for television and assiduously courted film studios.

After his death his wife, Anne, who detested Bond, wanted the character to join Fleming in the grave. She was overruled by his family and the Fleming estate recruited the novelist Kingsley Amis, an ardent Bond fan, to write the first post-Fleming novel under the pseudonym Robert Markham. Published as Colonel Sun in 1968, it was written in the same style of witty pastiche as Faulks's effort 40 years later: "James Bond sat in the bar of the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens and waited for something to happen."

The next iteration of Bond came with a series of authorised adventures written by the British author John Gardner between 1981 and 1996. All 14 are being republished, from this month onwards, by Silverfish, a new Orion imprint. Anticipating Deaver, Gardner chose to bring Bond up-to-date—which in the early 1980s meant making him cut back on alcohol and cigarettes, downgrade the Bentley for a Saab due to fuel costs and have his licence-to-kill status revoked by "fools of politicians". Raymond Benson, an American like Deaver, picked up where Gardner left off, writing six original novels between 1997 and 2002. But Bond's literary star was waning: Benson's worldwide sales of 600,000 were dwarfed by sales of 100m for the Fleming originals.

At this point Ian Fleming Publications cleverly refreshed the brand. The original Fleming books, treated harshly by highbrow critics in the 1950s and 1960s, were given the prestigious Penguin Modern Classics treatment in 2002. Charlie Higson, co-creator of the British television comedy sketch show The Fast Show, was commissioned to author the Young Bond series of children's books, which proved a commercial hit on their launch in 2005. The Moneypenny Diaries, a chick-lit spin-off series by Samantha Weinberg, writing under the pseudonym Kate Westbrook, also began in 2005, though it was less successful.

To find out what it is like to step into Fleming's bespoke John Lobb shoes, the Financial Times tracked Deaver down while he was in London for the launch of Carte Blanche. This was a glitzy affair that took place at a champagne bar in St Pancras railway station—Deaver arrived in a Bentley and Royal Marines abseiled down the walls with copies of the novel. The hoopla underlined the weight of expectation on the book: its predecessor, Devil May Care, was publisher Penguin's fastest-ever selling hardback fiction title, selling more than 44,000 copies in its first week. Only the Harry Potter books sold quicker.

"In approaching this project I had two responsibilities," Deaver said. "One was to make sure my fans—there are frankly several million of them, three or four million around the world—got the specific kind of book they wanted from me. The other was to the Bond folks, who have very specific ideas about the character, this beloved spy of theirs. I wanted to make sure I satisfied both of those needs."

He has been a Bond reader since he was eight, gorging on copies belonging to his advertising executive father. British hackles might nonetheless rise at the prospect of an American—not even a Texan, Bond's favourite variety of American—taking operational control of Her Majesty's most celebrated secret agent. "Bond's Britishness was part of the research," he said.

Carte Blanche borrows numerous details from the original novels. Bond's favourite meal is scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast, as related in From Russia With Love; he invents his own cocktail, like he did in Casino Royale; he still packs a Walther pistol and drives a Continental Bentley. But Deaver does not try to capture the texture of Fleming's writing. Bond's hair falls in "a comma of loose strands" over one eye; Fleming's more precise version describes a lock of black hair that "slowly subsided to form a thick comma above his right eyebrow".

"Sebastian [Faulks] did such a superb job writing in Ian's voice," Deaver explained. "I didn't feel I had the talent to do that. I'm very comfortable writing a book that falls into my formula. That means it's very fast-paced, the plot has lots of reversals in it, it takes place over a compressed time frame and it has lots of surprises at the end."

The plot globe-trots between Serbia, England, Dubai and South Africa as Bond endeavours to prevent a mysterious atrocity taking place. The villain is a recycling magnate with a gothic attraction to dead bodies; the recycling theme is possibly intended as an in-joke, though Deaver's unironic style ensures it is a buried one.

Bond fans will enjoy spotting the likenesses between old and new Bond. They will also notice considerable differences. Bond, a 70-a-day smoker in Fleming's books, has given up cigarettes. He still drinks, though not to the dipsomaniac extent of old. (In Casino Royale he prepares for a crucial game of baccarat that ends at 2.30am with a carafe of chilled vodka and a bottle of champagne, shared with a female companion.)

Some of those 007-ish politically incorrect attitudes have disappeared however. The man who complains "What the hell do they want to send me a woman for? Do they think this is a bloody picnic?" when a female agent is sent to work with him in Casino Royale is replaced by a 21st-century Bond who chivalrously refuses to sleep with a woman because she has recently split up with her fiancé, and who sententiously avers that the "intimacy of bodies comes prepacked with an intimacy of mind and spirit, and you ought not seek the first if you're unwilling to take delivery of the second".

Equally, the racism that simmers away gamily in Fleming's books—Koreans are "the cruellest, most ruthless people in the world," we learn in Goldfinger—has also been erased. Deaver's Bond reacts badly to a character talking about "coloureds" in South Africa ("'Coloureds?' Bond said sourly").

Faulks's Devil May Care rebooted the original Bond back into the best-seller charts. Can Carte Blanche keep him there? Deaver delivers more twists than a 1960s prom dance and the plot pounds along at a breathless pace. Yet the novel depicts an unconvincing Bond. The problem partly lies in Deaver's writing style, which has its bizarrely clunky moments, like the description of a baddie "who stood still as a Japanese fighting fish". But the project also faces two deeper difficulties.

One is the diminished stature of modern-day espionage following MI6 and the CIA's disastrous attempts to convince the world of Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Tellingly, Carte Blanche avoids mentioning Iraq (Bond's back story has him fighting in Afghanistan instead) and it shifts his spy career from MI6 to a shadowy security service called the Overseas Development Group. Fleming's cold war setting is a distant glamorous memory.

The other problem is finding a way to modernise Bond while staying true to the characteristics that animated him so vividly in Fleming's books. The original Bond has a "brutal and ironical" face; he is a sensualist through whom Fleming expressed a decadent, even kinky worldview, ripe with sadomasochism and sexualised violence, as indebted to the Marquis de Sade as John Buchan. Sanitise this side of 007 and you're left with Deaver's Bond, "a man of serious face and hunter's demeanour", a killing machine who talks of "target vectors" and "shooting scenarios".

Perhaps this Bond is truer to today's culture of managerial efficiency, but he has also lost much in the translation. 007 fans might have to face an unpalatable truth: their man is a shadow of himself in the 21st century. Or does Bond have another card up his sleeve?[/spoil]

http://www.slate.com/id/2296273/pagenum/all/#p2

[Blowfeld]

By David Martindale

Special to the Star-Telegram

Jeffery Deaver was 8 years old when he read his first James Bond novel. It turned him into a lifelong Ian Fleming 007 fan.

"The excitement I felt from the Bond books," the bestselling author says, "is one of the reasons I wanted to be a writer."

So Deaver thought his career had come full circle in 2004 when he won the Crime Writers' Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award.

But fittingly, given that Deaver's thrillers often stack twist endings on top of twist endings, there was another surprise still in store for him.

"About 18 months ago, well after receiving that award, I got a text message [from his agent] that was totally unexpected," he says. "It said, 'Would you be interested in writing the next James Bond novel?'

"Then began the debate. I carefully weighed the pros versus the cons. It took all of five seconds!"

Deaver is the fifth novelist since Fleming's death in 1964 to step in to keep the Bond adventures coming. His Carte Blanche (Simon & Schuster, $26.99) arrives in bookstores Tuesday.

It's important to note, however, that this isn't the start of a new series from Deaver.

"It was a one-book contract, with the understanding that I had to get right back to writing my own books," he says. "I'm currently working on my next Kathryn Dance book [fourth in the series]. Then I have a Lincoln Rhyme book that is due next year for publication in 2013 [No. 10 in the series]."

That said, when it comes to Bond, Deaver will never say never again.

"If Carte Blanche were to become a publishing phenomena, if it turns into, say, Ja mes Bond and the Deathly Hallows, then I would certainly be interested in revisiting it," he says. "But I would never not write my own books. Basically, we left it pretty much in the air for now."

Bond, the globetrotting British Secret Service agent with the license to kill, is one of the most famous and beloved characters in literary and film history.

Fleming wrote 12 Bond novels and nine short stories, beginning with Casino Royale in 1953. There have been 22 movies (not counting two "unofficial" Bond flicks) with six actors playing 007, from Sean Connery in 1962's Dr. No to Daniel Craig in 2008's Quantum of Solace.

Deaver's literary predecessors, selected by Fleming's estate to keep the Bond series alive, were Robert Markham (one novel), John Gardner (14 novels, plus two novelizations of feature films), Raymond Benson (six novels, plus three novelizations and three short stories) and Sebastian Faulks (one novel).

So it should come as no surprise that, once Deaver went to work devising a new story with Bond as Fleming created him, replete with ingenious gadgets, fast cars, high living, devious villains and incomparable women, he found that he had his work cut out for him.

"My concern was keeping everybody happy," he says. "Not only did I have the Fleming fans, those who grew up reading the books, but also those who knew Bond only from the movies. I also have my own fans who expect a typical Deaver novel, which is very fast-paced, takes place over a short period of time, has lots of twists and turns, with big surprise endings, plural, and a lot of psychological weirdness."

That's quite a juggling act to undertake. But Carte Blanche accomplishes all of those objectives.

The story: When England's MI6 gets wind of a terrorist plot that promises to cause "casualties estimated in the thousands," Bond is dispatched to find who is behind it and he is given carte blanche to stop it. The mission takes 007 from Serbia to England to Dubai to South Africa as he zeroes in on Severan Hydt, a megalomaniac who made his considerable fortune in the recycling business and is perversely obsessed with decay and death.

The previous Bond novel, Devil May Care, with Faulks "writing as Ian Fleming," was published in 2008 on the 100th anniversary of Fleming's birth. It was set in the 1960s, a direct follow-up to The Man With the Golden Gun, Fleming's last novel. But Deaver decided -- and the Fleming estate agreed -- that Carte Blanche should not be a period piece.

As a result, Deaver's Bond is a thoroughly modern agent living in a post-9-11, post-7-7 world.

"I didn't think that a Cold War caper would bring the intensity of emotional engagement to the story that the present day would," Deaver explains.

The irony there is that Garden of Beasts, the book that earned Deaver the Ian Fleming award in the first place, the one that put him on the Fleming family's radar, is his only historical thriller.

Deaver also decided that he would not attempt to write the book mimicking Fleming's style.

"Sebastian is a brilliant literary writer and he pulled if off very well in his book," Deaver says. "But I would not presume to do that. Nor do I have the talent to do that.

"Fortunately, the estate gave me carte blanche when it came to writing Carte Blanche."

Fleming fans are sure to be pleased with the results.

Even though Deaver has moved Bond to the present day, he remains true to 007's roots. Perhaps the most monumental change in Deaver's Bond is that he has become a nonsmoker.

Meanwhile, many familiar characters from the books -- Felix Leiter of the CIA, Rene Mathis of the French secret service, M (Bond's boss), Bill Tanner (Bond's handler), Miss Moneypenny (M's secretary) and Mary Goodnight (Bond's office assistant) -- are present and accounted for.

As for the characters and plots that originated in Deaver's mind, they all seem to fit in nicely in a Bondian world. Would Fleming fans expect anything less, for example, than women with names such as Ophelia "Philly" Maidenstone and Felicity Willing?

"I was specifically told by the estate to have fun with the names," Deaver says.

Still, there are limits. When Bond is briefed about his adversary, Severan Hydt, the agent replies, "That's really his name?"

That moment exists in the book, Deaver says, for one reason only:

"I had to acknowledge to the reader that, 'Yes, I know some of these names border on the absurd -- just go along with it,'" he says. "But seriously, isn't the point of this whole exercise to have a little fun?"

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/06/10 ... ouble.html

Deaver on Fleming

Favorite Bond novel: "I liked From Russia With Love for several reasons. First of all, we don't even meet Bond for 60 pages or more. What an unusual approach. That really broke the mold. Instead, it opens as a study of Red Grant, the assassin, and of the chess master and of the inner workings of SMERSH. As much as I enjoyed Goldfinger, the plot to steal all the gold from Fort Knox stepped too far away from credibility. Yet in From Russia With Love, the sole goal was to embarrass the British Secret Service and to assassinate Bond. That was real to me. And then, of course, there's the final scene, in which Rosa Klebb kicks Bond with the poisoned blade in her shoe and down he goes. He's dead! A brilliant ending to a brilliant book."

Favorite Bond moments: "Bond on skis, trying to outrun an avalanche as he escapes Blofeld's mountain fortress in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. I took up skiing because of that scene." A close second: Bond's scuba diving adventures in Live and Let Die and Thunderball. "Scuba diving is the only other sport I participate in." And one other: "I'm not a gambler, so I can't say I was inspired to hit the casinos because of Casino Royale. But I did steal a card trick from Moonraker. It's when Hugo Drax cheats at bridge and then Bond stacks the deck. I had a poker game in high school and I did the same thing with a deck of cards. I gave one guy a full house, another guy four of a kind, the third guy a straight flush and I gave myself a royal flush. And I pulled it off perfectly. It was a penny ante game and I fessed up immediately. But I can't tell you the fun I had trying to keep a straight face. It was such a Bondian thing to do."

Favorite Bond villain and favorite Bond girl: They are one and the same: Vesper Lynd from Casino Royale. "Fleming was not known for his twists. The books were pretty linear. But Vesper managed to fool me. When I first read that book, the revelation that she was a double agent took me by complete surprise. Yet you could also see a humanity in her. She was very tortured by her deception. And that made her real to me. And also, let's face it, she was hot!"

-- David Martindale

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/06/10 ... ouble.html

[Thunderpussy]

I have to admit I enjoyed Carte Blanche, Not the greatest Bond adventure and more in the style of J Gardner. I'd give it a 7/10.

[katied]

I skimmed it at Barnes And Noble. It was alright. Better than Devil May Care.

[Blowfeld]

I skimmed it at Barnes And Noble. It was alright. Better than Devil May Care.

I'll probably post my review this weekend. I had no idea the US version was delayed so long Fair warning for those who don't want spoilers. You know speaking of the publishing delay Bond 23 delay will probably mean the Yank fans boy will be watching it on their laptops long before it comes to theatre near them.

I do think Deaver did an admirable job writing this up, if he can pull off 3 or 4 more it will be a worth while endeavour. There were a few mistakes I will highlight later.

[FormerBondFan]

You know speaking of the publishing delay Bond 23 delay will probably mean the Yank fans boy will be watching it on their laptops long before it come to theatre near them.

Let's hope Trek 2 will be delayed to the time Bond 23 releases in theaters. That way, Americans would forget Bond.

[katied]

I'll probably buy Carte Blanche when it comes out in paperback. I was at the bookstore to buy another book(Simon Pegg's autobiography which I am really enjoying).

[Blowfeld]

Deaver takes 'Carte
Blanche' to retool
007


Updated 6/10/2011 12:36 PM |


By Carol Memmott, USA TODAY


In real time, Ian Fleming's James Bond,
created in the 1950s, would be a
doddering man of 90 by now.


Thanks to a literary reboot, he's standing
tall, young and debonair as a contemporary
thirtysomething war hero in Carte Blanche,
American thriller writer Jeffery Deaver's
retooling of the beloved 007.

With the blessing of the Fleming estate,
Deaver, best known for thrillers starring
Lincoln Rhyme, has updated and rejuvenated
Bond for the new millennium. In Carte
Blanche, due Tuesday, Bond must stop a
terrorist attack that could kill thousands.

"I wanted to reintroduce the literary Bond."
says Deaver, 61, who just returned from
London, where the U.K. edition of the book
came out in late May. "He's an enduring
character: He's the knight errant, he's the
Shane character, the stranger who goes out
on a quest to slay a dragon which we call
Goldfinger — or in my case, Severan Hydt."

It's estimated by the Fleming estate that 100
million Bond books have sold since the
1950s and that half the people in the world
have seen a Bond film.

Bond's résumé had to be updated for the
new century, but Deaver mostly relied on

what Fleming already had written.

"My Bond is very smart. Despite the carte
blanche (his license to kill), he's not morally
ambiguous."

The new Bond dossier:

Looks: "Pretty much as Fleming described
him:" 170 pounds, 6 foot tall, dark hair, lean,
blue eyes, black hair.

"Bond girls:" Ophelia Maidenstone, Felicity
Willing, Bheka Jordaan: all smart, all beautiful.
"There were charges leveled against Fleming
that he was a mysogynist, but he was writing
in the '50s and '60s." Though Fleming's
women were often described in terms now
considered politically incorrect, "it's not a lot
different from what you see in Mad Men."

Wheels: Bentley Continental GT — not the
Aston Martin. "People don't realize the
Bentley was one of Bond's original cars."

Drink: American bourbon. "In the books,
Bond didn't drink many martinis, though
when he did, they were shaken, not stirred."

This story ca be found here