Customer Reviews

The Diamond Smugglers

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Back in the 1950's, the smuggling of diamonds from Africa took on the proportions of a James Bond novel. In this non-fiction account of those times, Fleming outlines the successful counterintelligence effort which was used to bring the rampart smuggling under control.

A bit dry, but Fleming fans will appreciate the Bondesque style the story is recounted in.

Ian Fleming started his writing career as a journalist before discovering his imagination was both an easier and more lucrative source to work from, yet always strove to play reporter in the guise of presenting background in his James Bond novels. Fleming's one attempt at a non-fiction book thus held promise, yet fails to deliver.

"The Diamond Smugglers" is based on a series of conversations Fleming purports to have with a diamond-smuggling investigator he names "John Blaize." I say purports because Blaize's words, both as quoted by Fleming and in an introduction supposedly penned by Blaize, sound very much like Fleming. "The trouble with diamonds is every stone carries the germ of crime in it," Blaize explains.

The trouble with "The Diamond Smugglers" is not so much its sense of unreliability but that it's boring. Instead of capers, we get a geography lesson of coastal Africa. The device of channeling the narrative second-hand creates an automatic disengagement with a series of unimpressive tales about investigations undertaken for the great diamond mining interests of the time by what came to be known as the International Diamond Security Organzation, or IDSO. From what can be gathered but is never directly said in this book, the IDSO didn't exactly accomplish very much, yet Blaize adopts a stultifying self-congratulatory tone from beginning to end.

Smugglers, Blaize tells us in his introduction, "will hear of this book and read it, out of fear or vanity, to see if their activities have been revealed or their names mentioned." Or perhaps for a laugh at the authorities who tried so fruitlessly to root them out.

Stories include an investigation into how Liberia, not one of Africa's more diamondiferous nations, became a clearinghouse for diamond export. In one case, a small-time smuggler who keeps a diamond in a vaseline jar is snitched out by a pretend-friend angling for promotion. At one point, the IDSO tries to run a double agent, but he comes back with nothing.

When another double agent dies in a plane crash just as he is on the verge of cracking a case, Blaize labels it "curious" and leaves it be. We are told of great criminal figures who spirit away some diamonds and melt into the shadows, but Fleming and Blaize assure us we are safer not knowing their names.

As journalism, this wouldn't merit a segment of "60 Minutes." The book is only worth reading for the view it gives us of James Bond's creator switching gears, apparently while researching his Bond novel "Diamonds Are Forever." The best parts are when Fleming sets the stage for his conversations with Blaize, in levanter-battered cafes or beaches, where we get that sense of place Fleming conveyed so well. Some humor, too: At one point, in Morocco, Fleming and Blaize avert suspicions about what they're up to by pretending to have a captured coelacanth, a "living fossil" fish whose discovery was all the rage at the time, in a bathtub.

Fleming pronounces himself impressed at the end with this real-life "secret agent," calling him "a professional to his fingertips." Yet the only thing John Blaize has in common with James Bond are his initials. Otherwise he comes across as a boring bureaucrat with some dusty second-hand stories to throw up. Fleming, in passing them on so breathlessly, seems to have been a bit of a dupe.

This book by Flemming is interesting and well written. I like it because it is non-fiction and is a true story (unlike his Bond novels). A real Flemming fanatic will love this wonderful book. I rate it a 4 star book and a piece well done.

Ian Fleming is wonderful in this non-fiction story of diamond smuggling in the late fifties. Very well written. Fleming did his homework on this one. Claims to have written it with a chap called John Blaize, of a diamond organization. Went to Africa to research it with Blaize. Very good, because it is true, unlike his Bond novels.