This
review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained
therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to
copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions.
Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted
Permission
Title:
Live and Let Die
Series: James Bond
#2
Author: Ian Fleming
Rating: 3 of 5
Stars
Genre: Thriller
Pages:
199
Words: 69K
Publish: 1954
Much
more enjoyable than Casino
Royale. Not a hint of misogny even while being just as action
packed, even more so in fact.
Mr
Big is a great villain. He’s smart and covers all the angles but
he’s still a brutal thug at heart and that comes through in every
interaction Bond has with him. Him being devoured by the very
creatures he was using to protect himself was fantastic.
It’s
amazing how much goes on and yet Bond still seems to mostly just
travel around. This is very much a Cold War thriller and not anything
like the Jason Bourne movies. A gentleman’s game. I have a feeling
that is the path these stories will follow.
★★★☆☆
From
Wikipedia
The
British Secret Service agent James Bond is sent
by his superior, M, to New York City to investigate "Mr
Big", real name Buonaparte Ignace Gallia. Bond's target is an
agent of the Soviet counterintelligence organisation SMERSH,
and an underworld voodoo leader who is suspected of selling
17th-century gold coins to finance Soviet spy operations in America.
These gold coins have been turning up in the Harlem section
of New York City and in Florida and are suspected of being part of a
treasure that was buried in Jamaica by the pirate Henry Morgan.
In
New York, Bond meets up with his counterpart in the CIA, Felix
Leiter. The two visit some of Mr Big's nightclubs in Harlem, but are
captured. Bond is interrogated by Mr Big, who uses his
fortune-telling employee, Solitaire (so named because she
excludes men from her life), to determine if Bond is telling the
truth. Solitaire lies to Mr Big, supporting Bond's cover story. Mr
Big decides to release Bond and Leiter, and has one of Bond's fingers
broken. On leaving, Bond kills several of Mr Big's men; Leiter is
released with minimal physical harm by a gang member, sympathetic
because of a shared appreciation of jazz.
Solitaire later leaves Mr Big and
contacts Bond; the couple travel by train to St. Petersburg,
Florida, where they meet Leiter. While Bond and Leiter are scouting
one of Mr Big's warehouses used for storing exotic fish, Solitaire is
kidnapped by Mr Big's minions. Leiter later returns to the warehouse
by himself, but is either captured and fed to a shark or tricked into
standing on a trap door over the shark tank through which he falls;
he survives, but loses an arm and a leg. Bond finds him in their safe
house with a note pinned to his chest "He disagreed with
something that ate him".[1] Bond then investigates the
warehouse himself and discovers that Mr Big is smuggling gold coins
by hiding them in the bottom of fish tanks holding poisonous tropical
fish, which he is bringing into the US. He is attacked in the
warehouse by "the Robber", Mr Big's gunman, and in the
resultant gunfight Bond outwits the Robber and causes him to fall
into the shark tank.
Bond
continues his mission in Jamaica, where he meets a local fisherman,
Quarrel, and John Strangways, the head of the local MI6 station.
Quarrel gives Bond training in scuba diving in the local
waters. Bond swims through shark- and barracuda-infested waters to Mr
Big's island and manages to plant a limpet mine on the hull
of his yacht before being captured once again by Mr Big. Bond is
reunited with Solitaire; the following morning Mr Big ties the couple
to a line behind his yacht and plans to drag them over the
shallow coral reef and into deeper water so that the sharks
and barracuda that he attracts in to the area with regular feedings
will eat them.
Bond
and Solitaire are saved when the limpet mine explodes seconds before
they are dragged over the reef. Though temporarily stunned by the
explosion and injured on the coral, they are protected from the
explosion by the reef and Bond watches as Mr Big, who survived the
explosion, is killed by the sharks and barracuda.
