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| Devil May Care | 
 enlarge | Author: Sebastian Faulks
Publisher: Doubleday
Category: Book
Buy Used: £1,644.12
Avg. Customer Rating:  81 reviews
Media: Leather Bound
Edition: Limited
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 7.7
Dimensions (in): 17.5 x 12 x 6.3
ISBN: 0385528671
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780385528672
ASIN: 0385528671
Publication Date: May 28, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW, DISPATCHED FROM ENGLAND, USUALLY JUST 4-5 DAYS FOR DELIVERY.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Slick August 18, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I thoroughly enjoyed Devil May Care and just did not want it to end. Having not read any other Bond Novel, I very much had the films in my mind and this definitely harks back to the Sixties feel of the Connery years and that's what makes it so slick - good old fashioned Secret Agent heroics in a simple non-PC world. Well done Sebastian Faulks
Welcome back, Mr. Bond! August 18, 2008
Faulks is very comfortable with Fleming's idiom and catches his style nicely which is why it is labelled under Faulks writing as Ian Fleming. It is a hommage to Fleming with elements of lierary parody done with great respect. To be honest, I think Faulks is actually a better writer than Fleming. Faulks has fun with Bond and it works really well. Devil May Care is set in the period when the Bond films turned into self parody anf Faulks gives it a nice twists by showing Bond as a serious character out of time. That works really, really well.
 Read the Fleming books instead, or an Eric Ambler August 17, 2008
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
When, after years of watching the films, I finally tried out the Bond books, I thought "Wow, Ian Fleming is actually a really good writer." Several others have since said the same to me. The Fleming books have an inventive originality, plots that grip the reader, and a psychological insight or edge.
Having read Faulks's "Birdsong", I had high expectations of "Devil May Care". DMC is an easy read and OK to pass the time, but a disappointment. Anyone new to the Bond books should give this a miss and start instead with a Fleming original -- Casino Royale (Penguin Viking Lit Fiction) is a good place to start.
"Devil May Care" stitches together bits of plot, character, scenario and narrative devices from the Fleming books.
* Sports match with villain (Goldfinger)
* Tour round exotic city by local secret service station chief (From Russia with Love)
* More from "From Russia with Love", but I won't say what because it's a spolier
* Borrows heavily from "Moonraker", again I won't say what
But if you had a dozen dead donkeys and stitched together a leg from one, the ears from another, the spine from a third and so on, then with diligent stitching you could get something which looked like a donkey and smelt like a donkey. But it wouldn't breathe, it wouldn't stand up and frolic and canter.
And that's the problem with this book. It doesn't have the inventiveness, the psychological edge, the spark of life found in Fleming books. Read one of those instead.
If you've already read the Bond books, then borrow this one from a friend, or buy it second hand (don't bother rushing). Better still, read something by Eric Ambler, for example A Coffin for Dimitrios (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) or, harder to find, Journey into Fear (Pan Classic Crime).
It may be heresy - but movie Bond beats this rather stale affair. August 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If one of the eternal debates in Bondmania is between "Fleming's Bond vs. movie Bond", then this is an interesting addition to that debate. Ok, so the remit was to re-create the former. But Faulks has not escaped the cultural influence of the latter: and movie Bond seeps through, however hard he tries to stay true to the Fleming voice.
But does it work? Well not for me. There was an energy to Daniel Craig's interpretation in Casino Royale that is so lacking in this imitation Fleming. Yeah sure it's like slipping into a familiar pair of slippers...the structure, characters, language, the obsession with food/drink/brand names...but somehow, this time it just doesn't feel right. Even the tiny changes (swapping the traditional cards/golf for tennis) amplify the wrongness of merely trying to ape the original books.
Again, many would think that you cannot discuss movie and book Bond in the same breath. But the reality is that most people (like myself) get more excited about the new screen Bond than this rather wooden imitation.
Bond continues to live. But not, unfortunately, in this form.
Devil may care? A great audio production. August 5, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I like listening to audio CD's in my car on the drive to work and this didn't let me down.
Initial impressions are excellent, the CD's are stored in a gun metal tin inside a cardboard sleeve. Inside the tin the disks are held in individual cardboard sleeves. As a Bond fan I had a smile when I noticed there were seven disks, all labelled 001, 002 etc...
The story is read by Jeremy Northam, defiantly a voice for Bond. His style of reading suits the story well and draws you in and holds you there.
The story itself is said to be written "as Ian Fleming". I wonder who decided to give it that strap line. It's true the story picks up where Fleming's James Bond stories left off. So the time and place and characters all feel very familiar.
What isn't familiar is the length of the novel and the amount of writing that really has nothing to do with the main story put "Sets the scene". That's not a style Fleming used in his brief and punchy Bond novels.
Faulks carries this off well however and the story is really very good. There are times when the story seems to get lost, wanders along and then gets going again. This doesn't sit to well if you are expecting a strait Fleming copy but works if you treat Faulks's tale as a new look into the life of an old acquaintance.
A great production of a good book. I thoroughly recommend this for all Bond or adventure fans.
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