By Raymond Benson

Review by: Ryan Ronholm

Characters:James Bond; Helena Marksbury; Roland Marquis;
Bill Tanner; Dr. Steven Harding; Governor of Bahamas; Dr. Hope Kendell; Lee Ming; Sergeant Chandra; Otto Schrenk; Paul Baack
Le Gerant; Zakir Bedi

Locations covered: Nassau, London (and local areas), Brussels, Delhi, Kathmandu, Morocco, Nepal, Kangchenjunga

James Bond and his seceretary, Helena Marksbury are on vacation in the Bahamas, an idea that James Bond doesn`t agree with. He, of course would rather be in Jamaica at Shamelady (the original name for Goldeneye), and especially away from the house of the former Governor of the Bahamas, the same unnamed man as in Ian Fleming`s short story, `The Quantum of Solace.` The Governor is having a large party. Before it ends though, the Governor is brutally murdered (his throat slashed)
after telling James that he has some how interferred with a criminal group called `The Union`. Bond tracks the killer from the party down into an alley way. Before Bond can capture him, the murderer blows his head off, leaving Bond with no clues.

Fast forward two weeks… James Bond has returned to England and is out golfing with Bill Tanner when he meets up with an old rival from Eton, named Roland Marquis, who with a nerdy and quiet doctor have come out for a round. Marquis and the doctor, Steven Harding, challenge Bond and Tanner to a match, which Bond reluctantly accepts. The four go at it, with Roland and Harding taking 500 pounds of the two service lads. That night, Harding, who is involved with a super top secret project entitled “Skin 17”, highjacks the formula for the skin from it`s base with the help of Roland. The next morning the Secret Service are alerted to the theft and it is decided that the man responsible for finding Dr. Harding and the skin is 007, with whatever help he can get from Roland, who was a special liason in the project.

Bond recieves word that Dr. Harding is in Brussels. After a quick meeting with Major Boothroyd, he gets his Jaguar XK8 and heads out. After a pleasent drive, only miles from Brussles, Bond runs into three motorcyclists who are bent on stopping him. While Bond disposes of them quickly, using many of the toys installedvia Q Branch, he is still worried that there may be a huge leak within the secret service.
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While Bond`s arrival is taking place, we find out that Dr. Harding is a member of The Union and he was paid to steal the formula and devised a plot to get the micro-dot which contains all of the final information to The Union`s seller, the Chinese via a pacemaker. During Bond`s stay in Brussels, he gets slightly involved with the leader of Station B, gets into a fight with a massive ape of a man, meets the doctor who was blackmailed into performing the pacemaker surgery, and finds out that the man was killed outside of the jail. While all of this is happening, the man with the pacemaker, Mr. Lee Ming, is on a plane to Delhi, and Dr. Harding is escaping to Morocco

Bond, with the mission seemingly stalled, heads home to find that someone recognized Lee Ming as a passenger on a flight to Delhi. Ming manages to get into Nepal, only to then be kidnapped . He`s put on a highjacked sightseeing plane, which ends up crashing into the Kangchenjunga, the third largest mountain in the world. Hearing this seemingly good piece of news, “M” plans a massive recovery mission, under the guise of a diplomatic recovery of British and American politicans. Bond is to be teamed with a man who knows the Kangchenjunga, Chandra.

After weeks of climatizing, and people trying to kill Bond and sabotage the mission, they make it to the plane, where everything gets completely out of control. More people die, numerous double and triple crossers are revealed, the micro-dot is recovered and Bond makes it down the mountain.

While the novel is very well done, it doesn`t “digest” the same way that Benson`s two previous novels do. This novel is simply not as strong of a novel as Benson`s two previous forays, It especially pales to “The Facts of Death” and this is due, in part, to the lack of real danger involved. Bond is forced to recover a material that can be used on planes and missles to exceed speeds of Mach 7 but this hardly has immediate dire implications.

In a sense, the novel is slighty more than an updated and revised version of the movie: For Your Eyes Only. Something important goes missing in enemy territory and Bond is forced to go up against someone who the British government trust, but one that he doesn`t. The school rivalry is something that is quite important and interesting. It goes slightly into the past of 007, unlike anything else has before. The locales selected in the novel are very important as well and the way that Benson describes the cities, most noticeably Delhi, Kathmandu and Casablanca are true throwbacks to the writing of Ian Fleming. The people on the streets and the sounds, and even the religious beliefs and the way that they are used in the novel (Like Bond entering the church or mosque after the assassination of Zakir Bedi) add depth to this novel.

Benson`s leading women aren’t too great. His supporting women are though. Reading the parts with Helena Marksbury, and the Station B liason, Gina, have more life and zip to them than the scenes with Dr. Hope Kendell. His supporting men are much better than his women. Paul Baack, Otto Schrenk, Chandra, and Zakir Bedi are well written, and are strong additions to the novel. The time, climate and weather elements are very important to the novel and Benson pulls these off wonderfully.

The creation of “The Union”, Benson`s own “SPECTRE-esque” criminal group seems to have basically lifted itself from Fleming`s classic `Thunderball.` While “The Union” is more realistic and more PC (you have three women now), it isn`t that different from what are the classics. But if you are going to emulate, you might as well emulate the best. While shrouding the leader is something out of the movie series, the idea that the man is blind is quite unique and may easily set up for some interesting novels in the future.

Another thing that Benson likes to do is set the novels up for Generation X who was brought up on the Bond movies of Roger Moore. There is always a “pre-title sequence” that involves humor, destruction and nothing that can connect with any of Bond`s previous adventures. Personally, I would axe them from the novel, or make them more connected to it, like the opening chapters of Dr. No and OHMSS. Fleming rarely had an off the wall chapter (like HTTK does), nor did Gardner (who`s first chapters were usually the best and most complete.). However, if Benson`s next novel, expected to be set in Gibralter with another Union agent builds on the impressive start found here, these novels may lead to many fun adventures with 007. Let`s see in one year`s time.