James Bond Deconstructed

For Your Eyes Only Paperback

I recently read ‘For Your Eye Only‘ over the Christmas period and thoroughly enjoyed it. My initial interest was drawn to ‘Quantum of Solace‘ with it being the most recent Bond movie, and while it not having a thing to do with Daniel Craig‘s most recent outing, it was a great read with a cute twist at the end.

Any Bond fans curious to learn the title of Bond 23 could do worse than take a look at the contents page of this book. The stories are as follows; ‘From a View To a Kill‘, ‘For Your Eyed Only‘, ‘Quantum of Solace‘, ‘Risico‘ and ‘The Hildebrand Rarity‘.

As stated previously, I read ‘Quantum of Solace’ first (although it’s third placed in the book). It’s basically a story related to Bond by a British Governor in Nassau after a stuffy dinner party. Fleming is right on form as we are told of Bond’s apathy towards the party itself and the people he has just met. The story is quite intriguing, and somewhat old fashioned in that inimitable Fleming style.

‘Risico’ was another good read and the entire story was actually used as part of the movie ‘For Your Eyes Only’. This is the section where Bond meets Kristatos for dinner and leads to him raiding the warehouse with Colomobo.

‘The Hildebrand Rarity’, again, was very enjoyable and featured an extremely unlikable and loudmouth American on whose boat Bond is bunked for a few nights while fishing. Needles to say there’s a lovely lady aboard also, whom Bond gets to know.

‘For Your Eyes Only’ will also sound extremely familiar to Bond movie fans. This story was used as part of the film of the same name for the sequence where Melina Havelock spears Gonzalez (who killed her father).

‘A View to a Kill’ is more of a bog standard thriller and was my least favourite of the stories in the book.

In summary, this was perhaps my favourite Bond book to date (having read them all in sequence so far). They are all bite size Bond adventures and there’s no padding. Flemings unique style is prevalent throughout, and if you’re a fan, you’ll no doubt love these stories. Highly recommended.