Moonraker (James Bond #3) 3Stars

 

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Title: Moonraker
Series: James Bond #3
Author: Ian Fleming
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 211
Words: 74K
Publish: 1955

Matt reviewed the movie version of Moonraker last year, and while I knew from his review that the movie and book shared almost nothing, I still had this idea of Bond going into space and doing something.

Not in this book.

A Nazi, who has hidden his old allegiances, has built a super missile that can reach anywhere in Europe from England. This is supposed to give England the upper edge and the government is just wild about it. Everything seems to be going smoothly until one of their two operatives dies. Bond replaces him and tries to find out what “might” be going on. Agent Girl and Bond bond over an almost successful assassination attempt on them both and realize the German guy and his 50-100 “scyenzetists” are nazis in disguise who are hellbent on sending a nuclear tipped missile into the center of London with help from the Russkies.

While this was fun, it was also the most ridiculuous thing I have read in a very long time. The English government is sinking tons of money into this military project and they only have 2 agents looking out for their interests? There was no oversite, no military presence double and triple checking everything? Bond and Agent Girl survive the rocket taking off and the superheated steam it produces by dunking themselves in cold water 10minutes before it happens? Plus some other things. I don’t mind ridiculous in many stories if it doesn’t take me out of the story, but those two things I mentioned just felt like hitting a brickwall while going 60mph.

I still enjoyed the adventure and it didn’t make me want to stop, but it did make me glad that I’m switching this series and Discworld every three to four books. I don’t think I could read more than three of these in one rotation.

★★★☆☆

From Wikipedia

The British Secret Service agent James Bond is asked by his superior, M, to join him at M's club, Blades. A club member, the multi-millionaire businessman Sir Hugo Drax, is winning considerable money playing bridge, seemingly against the odds. M suspects Drax is cheating, and while claiming indifference, is concerned as to why a multi-millionaire and national hero would cheat. Bond confirms Drax's deception and manages to turn the tables—aided by a stacked deck of cards—and wins £15,000 (about seven times his own annual salary).

Drax is the product of a mysterious background, purportedly unknown even to himself. Presumed to have been a British Army soldier during the Second World War, he was badly injured and stricken with amnesia in the explosion of a bomb planted by a German saboteur at a British field headquarters. After extensive rehabilitation in an army hospital, he returned home to become a wealthy industrialist. After building his fortune and establishing himself in business and society, Drax started building the "Moonraker", Britain's first nuclear missile project, intended to defend Britain against its Cold War enemies. The Moonraker rocket is an upgraded V-2 rocket using liquid hydrogen and fluorine as propellants; to withstand the ultra-high combustion temperatures of its engine, it uses columbite, in which Drax had a monopoly. Because the rocket's engine can withstand high heat, the Moonraker is able to use these powerful fuels, expanding its range across Europe.

After a Ministry of Supply security officer working at the project is shot dead, M assigns Bond to replace him and also to investigate what has been going on at the missile-building base, located between Dover and Deal on the south coast of England. All the rocket scientists working on the project are German. At his post on the complex, Bond meets Gala Brand, a beautiful police Special Branch officer working undercover as Drax's personal assistant. Bond also uncovers clues concerning his predecessor's death, concluding that the man may have been killed for witnessing a submarine off the coast.

Bond catches Drax's henchman Krebs snooping through his room. Later, an attempted assassination by triggering a landslide nearly kills Bond and Brand, as they sunbathe beneath the Dover cliffs. Drax takes Brand to London, where she discovers the truth about the Moonraker by comparing her own launch trajectory figures with those in a notebook picked from Drax's pocket. She is captured by Krebs, and finds herself captive in a secret radio homing station—intended to serve as a beacon for the missile's guidance system—in the heart of London. While Brand is being taken back to the Moonraker facility by Drax, Bond gives chase, but is also captured by Drax and Krebs.

Drax tells Bond that he was never a British soldier and has never suffered from amnesia: his real name is Graf Hugo von der Drache, the German commander of a Werwolf commando unit. Disguised in an Allied uniform, he was the saboteur whose team placed the car bomb at the army field headquarters, only to be injured himself in the detonation. The amnesia story was simply a cover he used while recovering in hospital to avoid recognition, although it would lead to a whole new British identity. Drax remains a dedicated Nazi, bent on revenge against England for the wartime defeat of his Fatherland and his prior history of social slights suffered as a youth growing up in an English boarding school before the war. He explains that he now means to destroy London, with a Soviet-supplied nuclear warhead that has been secretly fitted to the Moonraker. His company is also selling the British pound short in order to make a huge profit from the disaster.

Brand and Bond are imprisoned where the blast from the Moonraker's engines will incinerate them, to leave no trace of them once the missile is launched. Before the launch, the couple escape. Brand gives Bond the coordinates he needs to redirect the gyros and send the Moonraker into the sea. Having been in collaboration with Soviet Intelligence all along, Drax and his henchmen escape by Soviet submarine—only to be killed as the vessel makes its escape through the waters onto which the Moonraker has been re-targeted. After their debriefing at headquarters, Bond meets up with Brand, expecting her company—but they part ways after she reveals that she is engaged to a fellow Special Branch officer.