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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:
 "He seemed to be beyond reach, locked in a world where ordinary human concerns couldn't touch or weaken him." July 19, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Written in the tradition of Ian Fleming, Sebastian Faulks delves deep into Fleming's iconic secret agent and the mythology that surrounds him, meditating on darker-than-usual themes that have implications for the way we live now. In Faulk's Cold War mid-1960's world, Bond has been ravaged at the hands of his enemies and temporarily pensioned off by M, his life at best a double-edged sword where no triumph is likely to be anything but short-lived.
When a Frenchman of Algerian birth is savagely murdered on the outskirts of Paris, Detective Inspector Mathis is mystified as to who could have caused such a violent act: the boy's tongue had been severed and a single bullet has been fired up through the roof of the mouth. When drugs are thought to be the likely cause of the crime, Mathis comes to the realization that there is something far bigger going on than just young dissolute youths peddling heroin,
Meanwhile, James, tired of the South of France, has on the invitation of Felix Leiter, his old friend from the CIA, come to Rome, where in the middle of St. Peters Square he meets an extraordinarily beautiful woman by the name of Larissa Rossi, ostensibly in Rome with her husband, a director of one of the large insurance companies, but whose presence fills James with a strange mixture of unease and passion: she reeks of "breeding, youth, and expensive hosiery."
Intent to enjoy his time with Larissa, James can't quite believe it when he is called out of sabbatical and back to London by a cigar smoking M, after all, this is a tired and worn-down James, fresh from his encounter with Auric Goldfinger and his plans to raid Fort Knox and obliterate the world economy. James is beginning to show his battles with evil, on his torso and arms there's a network of scars, small and large, that trace a history of his violent life: "Your tired James, Your played out, Finished."
But perhaps it is only James that can battle "the master-of-all-trades the psychopathic Dr. Julius Gorner who is most likely responsible for this recent influx of drugs, infiltrating both Europe and England with pharmaceuticals in the form of heroin. Changing sides during the 2nd World War, fighting for the Nazis initially and then for the Russians at the battle of Stalingrad, Gorner has become a soldier of fortune, contemptuous of England because he feels as though the country had laughed at him.
So Bond must embark on a mission to doggedly pursue Gorner across Europe to Persia, hot on the trail to shut down the operation of a twisted individual with a demonic sense of purpose. Gorner seems to be beyond reach, locked in a world where ordinary human concerns couldn't touch or weaken him; he's bent on world destruction and domination and has made himself a key figure in the drug world. His only vulnerability is his physicality, marked by a rare deformity, a hair covered wrist shaped like a monkey, and a white glove that hides it.
Surprisingly it is Larissa who also has a connection to Gorner, soon revealing herself as Scarlett Papava, a lonely housewife, busy banker, and lady of the night who wants to enlist James' help to get Poppy, her heroin addicted sister back from the evil clutches of Gorner: "He just won't let her go, he's slowly killing her and loving every moment of it." But there's something about Scarlett that gets right under James' defenses, something about her that makes him feel profoundly uneasy.
With Scarlett determined to find her sister, and James delving deeper into Gorner's criminal enterprises, both are blindsided by the extent of this madman's plans for world domination that eventually plays out deep within the city of Tehran and the vast surrounds of the Caspian Sea.
From London to Paris, to Tehran, and then onto Leningrad and Helsinki, Bond is faced with a world mostly ruled by protection and influence, arms and dollars. In a novel that is filled with misfits and vagabonds, stoolpigeons, agents and secret police, Gorner and Bond must battle it out against a background of the cold war where America is fighting a lonely war for "freedom" in Vietnam and where the threat of the West being overrun by communism is ever present. Formulaic to the last, Faulks doesn't shy away from giving us a series of spectacular set pieces involving a giant ship-sea plane, loaded with nuclear bombs and with a British flag on it and a stolen a Vickers VC10 British airliner, painted with BOAC livery that is heading towards a fiery crash landing in the Soviet Union. Although this novel certainly doesn't reinvent the legend of our favorite secret agent, Bond's adventures are still harrowing in his journey from the known to the unknown with Faulks propelling his story along at break-neck speed, riding the apex to its violent conclusion, with Bond ultimately saving the world and getting his girl. Mike Leonard July 08.
 Good evening, Mr Faulks July 18, 2008
5 out of 10 found this review helpful
The name's Faulks, Sebastian Faulks. I have just written an awfully exciting James Bond book under the name of Ian Fleming. All my friends who write reviews in the London papers tell me it is fabulous darling and -
Insert the gag, Oddjob. Permit me to disagree, Mr Faulks. What you have achieved in this book Devil May Care is a no-pace, no-action, no-rhythm clunker. It seems to me that this is not so much a book as a cheque, which is to say a document of small intrinsic interest guaranteeing that you will collect a great deal of money. Not so, Mr Faulks? I have a memory of Ian Fleming. I must tell you, Mr Faulks, that next to him you are a wet and a weed.
When Fleming wrote a thriller he knew what he was talking about. He spent a fair amount of WWII in a camouflaged hole in the ground, waiting to give the Germans a hard time should they and their tanks arrive in Kent. In the post-war years he was a dedicated consumer of wine, women and cigs, passing his time in Jamaica and the casinos of Europe. His literary method involved lying in the bath smoking the Morlands with the triple gold band through a holder, dictating his deathless prose to a stenographer called Wednesday, or maybe Vespa.
And unlike your little exercise in pastiche, Mr Faulks, Fleming's books were serious. Casino Royale hit the world like a seven-litre Bentley in the solar plexus. It contained no exploding cigarette lighters or laser guided hatbands. Its tough, bleak existentialism might have come from the pen of Graham Greene, if Graham Greene had decided to write a Cold War thriller.
It is true that as Fleming wrote more Bond books, they became more far-fetched. In the splendid times when Stalin ruled the free world, we at Smersh frowned on golden guns and moon-rockets, and suspected organizations like Spectre of bourgeois deviationism. The films? Nothing to do with Fleming. Comics, made by silly Americans called after a green vegetable admired by few. No, I will not speak of the films.
Now, then. Let us speak of death, Mr Faulks. The death of Fleming led to various sequels, commissioned by publishers wishing to keep the torrent of Bond money flowing. And eventually to you, Mr Faulks.
Frankly, Mr Faulks, you have done a rotten job. Fleming's Bond plays Baccarat. Your Bond plays tennis. Fleming's Bond thinks like a citizen of the Empire. Your Bond thinks like a citizen of north London. Thanks to Fleming's Bond, I currently reside under a landslide on Crab Key. Even by my standards, Mr Faulks, your horizons seem limited.
So we have organized something special for you, Mr Faulks. As you whimper in your restraints you will no doubt be wondering whether it will be the shark pool or the laser beam up the jacksy. Well, Mr Faulks, it will be neither. And there will be no escape in the nick of time. I am sorry, Mr Faulks? Your fate? Ah, yes. For Ian Fleming, the world's bookshelves. For you, Mr Faulks, the wastepaper basket.
Ahahahaahahahahaha.
Ernst Stavro No Goldfinger (Dr)
 Not at All Good July 16, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
A typical story by a follow on author, Mr Faulks has not grasped the character of James Bond and tries too hard to replicate Ian Flemming.
In my opinion this book does not do justice to either Ian Flemming or James Bond
 Flawless continuation of a classic July 14, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've loved the Bond films for years but had never read any of the books. I thought I might get a copy of this for Father's day so in preparation I borrowed a copy of "Dr. No" to get a flavour of the real Ian Fleming for comparison. I have to say that I'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the real thing and Sebastian Faulks' tale. The only thing that might alert me the the counterfeit is the lack (almost but not quite) of political incorrectness as regards "foreigners".
Devil May Care is pretty standard fare for a bond story: very unbelievable, slightly formulaic plot line, not great on character depth but a rollicking good read - action, stunningly attractive girls (lots of them), deranged villains - and all of this within an authentic cold war setting. I'm sure Bond fans will love this.
Rubbish July 10, 2008
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
Very disappointing. Faulkes is an undeniably good writer, but here he tries to write in the manner of Ian Fleming. All he achieves is a dumbing down of his own style without any of the freshness or pace of Fleming or the wonderful sense of place and time that Fleming achieved. As such it comes out as hackneyed, trite, superficial and just plain old fashioned. This is a complete waste of time...although not very much, as five hours should do the trick, if you can be bothered.
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