Wednesday 27 February 2013

The Bourne Identity

Robert Ludlum
(1980)


The trawler plunged into the angry swells of the dark, furious sea like an awkward animal trying desperately to break out of an impenetrable swamp.

***

After reading a couple of James Bond books, I thought it was time to read the debut of another well-travelled superspy who shares the shame initials. Jason Bourne is familiar to most as the hero of the three excellent movies loosely based on Robert Ludlum's trilogy of books.

'Loosely' is the operative word: the Matt Damon movies lift the opening of Identity and then basically do their own damn thing from there on out, and are no poorer for it. To be fair, it would have been kind of difficult to do a straight adaptation in the 21st Century, since Carlos the Jackal, the book's éminence grise, has been languishing in a French jail since 1994. In any case, I've always believed the best movie adaptations are not often the most faithful adaptations (as in the case of LA Confidential, or The Shining). I'm perfectly happy if a book and movie are their own distinct things.

In sharp contrast to the movies directed by Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass (sorry to keep harking back to them, but they do cast a long shadow), Ludlum's Bourne Identity feels comfortably old-fashioned. It reads a like the prototypical airport blockbuster, featuring dastardly bad guys, a chase across a continent, and a mysterious but supremely capable man-of-action as its protagonist. The prose is often purple (the opening line quoted above is understated compared to some of the later passages), but enjoyably so, and Ludlum keeps the pace up so effectively that the book feels shorter than it actually is.

Ludlum is gloriously unconcerned with literary pretensions, and instead concentrates on what the reader of this type of book really wants: knowledgeably-described locations, international intrigue and detailed descriptions of assorted weaponry. Most of all, he gives us a very cool hero who can shoot or asskick his way out of any given situation, and with a past so mysterious it's a mystery even to him. Strip everything else away, and those are exactly the same elements the films retain, updated to reflect 21st Century geopolitics.

What I learned: see above - well-drawn locations and a well-drawn character go a long way.

Thursday 21 February 2013

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Ian Fleming
(1963)


It was one of those Septembers when it seemed like the summer would never end.

***

OHMSS needs no introduction to fans of the 1969 film, the sole Bond outing for George Lazenby. Unusually for a Bond film, Peter Hunt's adaptation hews fairly close to the literary source, following Bond as he falls in love, faces off against Ernst Stavro Blofeld and gets married, all while enjoying a range of winter sports.

This is the second Bond I've read recently, after Casino Royale, and it's interesting to compare Fleming's style at the beginning and end of his career as a thriller author. Casino Royale was, of course, the first James Bond novel, while OHMSS was published a year before Fleming's death, by which time his creation was a household name.

The first thing to notice is that, while all of the requisite Bond elements (summed up a little glibly by Paul Johnson in the New Statesman as "sex, sadism and snobbery") are in place, the writing style is noticeably different. Fleming cuts loose with a good few hundred exclamation marks, many of them within the narration rather than the dialogue. It's an interesting and confident approach... some might say over-confident. In places it feels like Bond is relating the story in the manner of an exciteable teenage girl.

Fleming just about gets away with it, and that's because the breathless style is hitched to one of his strongest stories, as Bond investigates a genocidal plot in the Swiss Alps. The skiing scenes are thrillingly told, once you become accustomed to the exclamation marks, and Fleming's genius for scene-setting is as potent as ever.

Spoilers below, if you've never seen the movie.

Of course, the thing everyone remembers about this book (and the cinematic version) is the end, when Bond's new bride Tracy is gunned down by Blofeld in a drive-by revenge attack. As in Casino Royale, the tragedy is heavily foreshadowed by Bond's sheer happiness in the pages leading up to the climax. The epitome of bachelorhood, Bond could never be allowed to settle down. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book, killing any love interest that threatens to tie the hero down.

You can understand why it's such a temptation for authors, because it accomplishes two important tasks: resolving a tricky story problem while at the same time creating some high drama. You could accuse Fleming of taking the easy way out here, but the execution is so well done that it's hard to complain. I've always been partial to a downbeat ending, and OHMSS doesn't disappoint.

What I learned:
  • if in doubt, kill the love interest
  • a dramatic setting works wonders if you get the balance of description to action right, as Fleming assuredly does here

Monday 18 February 2013

Casino Royale


 


Ian Fleming
(1953)


The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.

***

Despite being a fan of the cinematic adventures of Mr Bond, I'd only got around to reading one of the original books before now. I'd enjoyed From Russia With Love when I read it about ten years ago, but I remember having to work at the prose. I'm a fan of fairly spare, stripped-down description in books (although it's not always a discipline I can adhere to as a writer), and I remember Fleming being at the opposite extreme: lots of thin, cruel lips and aquiline noses and clothes described in the kind of obsessive detail that Brett Easton Ellis employed for effect in American Psycho.

Bearing that in mind, it came as a pleasant surprise how easy Casino Royale is to read. It's not that it's different from what I expected in terms of writing style, it's exactly what I expected... and yet I found myself tearing through the book in the space of a day. Fleming spends pages describing locations, characters and clothing, and yet it doesn't detract from the readability of the book at all. He even spends an entire chapter explaining the rules of Baccarat... and I wasn't bored. I just wanted to play Baccarat.

This was Fleming's first novel, and as such, it's an odd example of the species. For a thriller, it's light on action (although that could just be my gauche twenty-first century sensibilities), and the plot is very unconventionally structured, with the main conflict resolved two-thirds of the way in by Deus ex Machina. There's the aforementioned obsession with detail and description, and at times it seems as though Fleming is more interested in converying to the reader a sense of an exclusive and unique world, rather than being overly concerned with plot or character.

The more I thought about it, the more I realised that this is one of Casino Royale's biggest strengths: it transports you to the glamorous world of high-stakes gambling on the continent in the early 1950s, and weaves in just enough sex, violence and mystery to remind you that it's a novel, rather than an engaging piece of journalism. At times, that's exactly how I was enjoying the book: the same way I enjoy long-form magazine articles that introduce me to a world I've never visited. Unfortunately for me, I was born fifty years too late to visit this particular world.

Spoiler warning, because I'm going to talk about the ending.

Fleming often comes in for a bruising about his attitudes towards women, and it's easy to hold up the fate of original Bond girl Vesper Lynd in this debut offering. Blackmailed by SMERSH into betraying Bond, she ultimately commits suicide as the only way to extract herself from an impossible situation. Bond internalises his feelings, informing his superiors of the situation by phone: "3030 was a double, working for Redland. Yes, dammit, I said 'was'. The bitch is dead now."

It's already one of my favourite last lines in literature. Out of context it comes across as cold, even misogynistic, but in the context of the book, it's anything but. Fleming spends most of the book delineating Bond as a man whose demonstrative success with women is undermined by the fact he clearly doesn't have a clue about what makes them tick. Throughout the book, Bond is bemused, irritated and infatuated by Vesper in turns. By allowing himself to fall for Vesper and leaving himself open to the resulting heartbreak, the ultimate capable man has managed to get in out of his depth. That's why, despite appearances, the anger in that last sentence is directed squarely at himself.

What I learned: a good opening line is important, but a killer final line is what resonates.

Saturday 16 February 2013

2013: my year of thrillers

Change of pace for the blog in the new year, partially in response to some changes in how I'm going to be writing and publishing from now on (more details to follow soon, I hope). I'll still post occasionally about my e-publishing experience, but I'm going to shift the focus more towards what really matters: reading books and writing books.

One of my new year's resolutions for 2013 was to make a concerted effort to read more books, and in particular, more classic thrillers. I've not exactly been a slouch in this matter up until now, but a gift of  the James Bond DVD boxset over Christmas reminded me that I'd only read one of the original books: JFK's own favourite, From Russia With Love.

I quickly resolved to remedy this by tackling the Bond novels, starting with Casino Royale. But when I got started thinking about it, I asked myself, why stop with Fleming?

There are a ton of classic thrillers and crime fiction classics I've had sitting on my 'to read' list for years: Ludlum's Bourne Identity, Forsyth's Day of the Jackal, Le Carre's Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Plenty of classic noir I've yet to read, too: I've only read one Dashiell Hammett, one Jim Thompson and one James M. Cain to date. Raymond Chandler's had a better strike rate with me, but incredibly I've still to get around to The Long Goodbye.

From dead Americans to live Brits - I'd like to read some more Simon Kernick, and maybe some Stephen Leather. The latest couple of Matt Hilton's books look intriguing, and I've been meaning to check out some of Ian Rankin's early non-Rebus spy thrillers.

No doubt there'll be the regular installments from Lee Child and Michael Connelly - just because I'm touring the canon doesn't mean I have to neglect the modern masters. And then there's John D Macdonald's Travis McGee series - I've been meaning to get around to reading the rest of them for years...

It's February, so I've got through a few of the names on my list already, and will be playing catch-up posting my thoughts over the next few days. My goal is two-fold - I'm reading books I've wanted to get around to for years, but I'm also immersing myself in my chosen profession. I'm doing okay as a new thriller author, but I want to be the best I can be. The quickest way to do that is to learn from the best.

That's why I'm changing the name of the blog to Thriller School. Over the next year, I'm going to read my way through as many great thrillers as I can find: new and old, American, British or further afield. I'm going to give my brief observations on each book once I finish it, and in each case, wrap it up with one thing I as a writer have learned from the book.

I hope you like my journey through the pantheon of crime and thriller authors, and I hope I can stimulate the occasional conversation. I'm very open to suggestions, even though my existing list means I won't run out of books any time this decade.

I do know two things: I'm going to have a lot of fun reading, and I'm going to be a better writer at the end of the year.