One of the numerous volumes on James Bond's bookshelf (there are more than you think) is Eric Ambler's The Mask of Dimitrios. Bond reads the novel, published in 1939, on the plane en route to Istanbul in From Russia, with Love (1957).
The novel concerns a writer of detective mysteries called Charles Latimer. In Istanbul, he's introduced to Colonel Haki, the head of the secret police, who, interested in Latimer's profession, tells him about a real murder. A man called Dimitrios, by all accounts a nasty piece of work, has washed up dead, having been stabbed. As far as Haki is concerned, the case is closed, but out of professional curiosity, Latimer begins to look into the life of this criminal. Following a trail from Turkey to Greece, Bulgaria, and Paris, he discovers that the truth about Dimitrios isn't so clear cut, as events take a sinister and dangerous turn.
What Bond thought
of the book is unrecorded, but he may have returned to the book from
time to time and wondered whether there were certain echoes of the book
in his own adventures.
For instance, according to the records of the Greek authorities, Dimitrios is 182 centimetres tall. Bond may have raised an eyebrow at that – Bond himself is only one centimetre taller, as mentioned in From Russia, with Love, and indeed, we subsequently find out that Dimitrios is a little taller still.
Then there's the description of the nature of spy work. At one point of the novel, Latimer meets a polish spy named Grodek, who Latimer discovers recruited Dimitrios as an agent. In a subsequent letter recounting his meeting, Latimer wonders whether 'governments of adult men and women behave like children playing Red Indians'. The phrase would have been familiar to Bond. In Casino Royale, Le Chiffre, while torturing Bond with a carpet beater, tells Bond that 'the game of Red Indians is over, quite over', and later Bond admits to himself that he 'had been playing Red Indians through the years.' It's unlikely that Ian Fleming, perhaps having read The Mask of Dimitrios before he wrote Casino Royale, borrowed the phrase from Ambler, as, during the Second World War, he called his commando unit, 30AU, his Red Indians, but the coincidence is interesting all the same.
In another part of the book, Latimer discovers that Dimitrios was also a drug pedlar, and learns about the drug trade from a former associate of Dimitrios, a Mr Peters. Latimer finds out, for instance, that drugs are smuggled into Europe from Istanbul on the Orient Express, with the help of a bribed sleeping car attendant. Bond, of course, travels on the Orient Express in From Russia, with Love, but the train is mentioned again in the short story 'Risico', which is about the drugs trade. Fleming describes how opium is smuggled onto the train in Istanbul and hidden in false upholstery in the carriages, with the help of bribed train cleaners. As he set off to Rome to tackle Colombo, and then Kristatos, Bond must have been pleased about having had something of a grounding in drug smuggling from Eric Ambler.
What about the nature of good and evil? James Bond wrestles with this question as he recuperates from injuries sustained by the carpet beater in Casino Royale. Bond tells Mathis that 'in order to tell the difference between good and evil, we have manufactured two images representing the extremes – and we call them God and the Devil'. Latimer also reflects on the nature of good and evil, and considers that traditional concepts are not sufficient: 'It was useless trying to explain [Dimitrios] in terms of good and evil. They were no more than baroque abstractions. Good business and bad business were the elements of the new theology.'
It's hard to say whether Ian Fleming had The Mask of Dimitrios in mind as he wrote Casino Royale and 'Risico', or that the book was especially influential in the writing of From Russia, with Love, but as Bond finds himself in the same murky environments as Eric Ambler's hero, it's unsurprising that there would be there be some aspects in common between Ambler's and Fleming's work.
I'm reading – or rather re-reading – PG Wodehouse's 1913 novel, The Little Nugget, at the moment. If the title is familiar to you, it may because it's mentioned in the novel of From Russia, with Love. The book is in a pile of other 'membership badges of the rich man's club' next to SMERSH killer Donovan 'Red' Grant, who's lying prone in the garden of a Crimean villa, waiting for his regular masseuse.
Wodehouse's comic tale set within a private school, featuring romance, detectives, gangsters, and plots to kidnap a repulsive schoolboy, might seem an odd choice for a psychopath (although the kidnapping element might be of professional interest to Grant). But then again, the book is the sort of volume that SMERSH would make Grant read as part of his training to develop the persona of a wealthy, sophisticated man, allowing him to enter English society and intelligence circles. (Such methods were standard for Soviet spy agencies. The Penkovsky Papers, for example, include a manual that instructs Soviet agents operating in the USA how to behave without raising suspicion – see The Cold War Spy Pocket Manual, by Philip Barker.)
Moving inside the villa, we get a glimpse of Grant's preferred reading: stacks of 'garish paperbacks and hardcover thrillers'. A selection of pulp fiction about seductive heroines, sultry femme fatales, and hard-boiled detectives, I shouldn't wonder.
There is a similar whiff of pretence in Goldfinger's reading. In the hall of the Grange, Goldfinger's pile in Kent, James Bond peruses a copy of The Field, a magazine for country squires and the hunting, fishing and shooting set. The magazine, placed where it can be seen, displays Goldfinger's credentials as a respectable member of the community.
We get a different picture of Goldfinger in his bedroom, as Bond discovers in the drawer of Goldfinger's bedside table a copy of The Hidden Sight of Love, a salacious novel that is Goldfinger's 'solitary indiscretion'. (I imagine Bond uttering 'dirty bugger' to himself at this point.) The book does indeed exist, and if you're interested, a New York bookseller currently has a copy listed on eBay. According to the description, the book is a piece of classic Victorian erotic fiction reprinted by Palladium Publications in January 1958, which means that it was hot off the press when Ian Fleming sat down to write Goldfinger that month in Jamaica (the novel was published in 1959). Well, Fleming did have an interest in promoting 'lost books', as we see from his championing of Hugh Edward's All Night at Mr Stanyhurst's.
We know the sort of books James Bond reads – manuals, golf books, thrillers, inspiring books about politics and the intelligence community – but in two of the Bond novels, we also get a sense of the books that the villains read. In contrast to Bond's library, there's something not quite honest about the villains' choice. Just what we'd expect, of course, but I also wonder whether it reflects Fleming's own tastes, just as Bond's library does.
Last week, a list of Ian Fleming's top ten books, as selected by me, was posted on Artistic License Renewed: An Art and Literary James Bond Blog and Tribute to Richard Chopping. Now it's the turn of James Bond. Far from being an occasional reader of books about golf and cards, Bond's library is far more varied. Indeed, Fleming wrote of Bond's 'book-lined sitting-room'. Visitors to Bond's London flat are likely to see not only sports books, but also detective and mystery thrillers, gothic chillers, books about politics, a book of 18th-century letters, and travel writing, among other works. Inevitably the interests of Fleming and Bond overlap, but I think Bond's library still retains a distinctive profile. Click the link to see my suggestions for Bond's top ten books. Many thanks to Artistic License Renewed for inviting me to write the article.
While the James Bond of the cinema is rarely seen carrying a book (a volume on heraldry in On Her Majesty's Secret Service is a rare example), the literary Bond is, well, more literary. You can find a general discussion of the books on Bond's bookshelf here, but in this post I want to focus on one particular volume – Profiles in Courage by John F Kennedy and published in 1956.
Profiles in Courage appears in Ian Fleming's final full-length novel, The Man with the Golden Gun (1965). Bond is in Jamaica on the trail of professional hitman Francisco Scaramanga. In chapter 7, Bond arrives at his hotel, settles into his room, calls room-service, and reads Profiles in Courage as he sips an ice-cold bourbon.
Fleming undoubtedly knew the book well. The chapter to which Bond turns, which is an account of US senator Edmund G Ross, who at the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868 saved the president from conviction, is indeed subtitled, 'As I looked into my open grave'. This is chapter 6 out of 11; the book also includes profiles on president John Quincy Adams, 19th-century senators Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, Sam Houston, Lucius Lamar, and George Norris, and 20th-century senator Robert A Taft.
By referencing Kennedy's book, Fleming returned the compliment that Kennedy paid him when in 1961 he included From Russia, with Love in a list of his top ten books. Fleming's reference was also something of a tribute to Kennedy, who had been assassinated in November 1963. Earlier that year, Fleming had dined with Kennedy, and the two had got on enormously well, especially when Fleming suggested some innovative ways of dealing with Fidel Castro. It is notable that in the reference in his novel, Fleming uses the more familiar 'Jack Kennedy', rather than 'John F Kennedy'.
The edition shown here is a 1961 paperback. We don't know what edition Bond reads, but no doubt Bond would have found a paperback convenient for travelling, being easily packed in his suitcase.
Reference:
Lycett, A, 1995 Ian Fleming: The Man Behind James Bond, Turner
