Customer Reviews

The Man With The Golden Gun (James Bond Novels)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Afraid I've got to take issue with a one-star rating for this novel. Sure, it's not the best Bond novel -- that's probably "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," although I've also got a soft spot for the unusual "The Spy Who Loved Me" -- but it's hardly a bad novel. Scaramanga, far from being a terrible villain, is actually one of the more memorable Fleming ever wrote. I enjoy the way in which he serves as a sort of dark mirror for Bond himself, and that makes me feel like Fleming was actually just trying something different with this novel. That may or may not make it one of the lesser of his Bond novels, but I think saying that it's just plain bad is an overstatement.

Anyways, if you're a Bond fan, you still ought to give the novel a look.

The James Bond novels have been a staple in my home for over 40 years, since I started reading them at 10 years old. I read every novel once every two years it seems, as Fleming's impeccable writing, his plots, his villians, and most of all, the decription of detail that makes reading these novels the ultimate escape.
That said, I think I know how Fleming writes...
Each time I read this book, I get a growing feeling that not only did Ian Fleming not finish the book, it seems like he wrote almost exactly HALF, and some one else took over upon his death.
As a little Fleming is better than none at all, I still read the book.
Ian Fleming wrote 007 Novels for 11 years. They are all superb, wuth the earlier, grittier ones being the best. I don't play cards, but I was sweating along with Bond while he played Le Chiffre at Casino Royale.
You get that same marvelous sense of being in the story the first half of The Man With The Golden Gun, and then the story (and the writing) seem to go wrong.
I report, you decide.

Again I am surprised at the one star ! I wrote this review when I first read the book back in 1998 and still stick by this !!!

This book gets away from the complex plots and world threatening villains usually associated with many of the other books to concentrate on Bond in the limited surroundings of a half finished hotel in Jamaica with the man he is to assassinate. This book seems to centralise more on James Bond the man and his inner thoughts, the lack of action is easily made up for with the mind games between Bond and Scaramanga leading upto the final gun fight !

A sad end to a great series, "The Man With The Golden Gun" has James Bond facing off against an assassin with sidelines in eco-terrorism and hotel management in Ian Fleming's last novel.

Published the year after Fleming's death in 1964, it is a matter of debate whether "Gun" was properly finished by Fleming or reworked by other hands. Clearly it lacks the same glossy polish of earlier Bond novels, retreading plot points in routine, humorless fashion. Sent to Jamaica to kill "Pistols" Scaramanga, a hired killer responsible for shooting several fellow agents, Bond blunders his way in no time at all into his target's confidence, despite the fact Scaramunga has been warned an English spy has been sent to kill him.

Hardly one to hide his light under a bushel, Scaramanga introduces himself to Bond as "The Man with the Golden Gun" and shows off his signature weapon by blowing away a couple of tame birds. "Mister, there's something quite extra about the smell of death," Scaramanga tells Bond in the way of a job interview. "Care to try it?"

If Fleming was challenging his readers to make sense of his overdone prose, I wasn't up to it. Another such moment happens when Bond reflects on alcohol: "The best drink of the day is just before the first one."

Adding to general confusion is Scaramanga's purpose in Jamaica. He's got a hotel there languishing amid the bindweed and interest rates, and while looking in, decides to see if he can raise some needed capital by laying waste to Jamaica's canefields and bauxite factories in exchange for Soviet and Cuban funding. Several mob guys and spies are on hand to basically listen to Scaramanga do his bad-guy Mickey Spillane thing and stare menacingly but impotently at his new English go-fer.

There is certainly an underbaked quality to "Golden Gun" that begs the question if Fleming completed more than a first draft. Many of the transitions are whiplash-abrupt. The opener gives us a brainwashed Bond attempting to kill M, but just a few pages later he is winging off on M's latest assignment. Bond hardly lands at Kingston Airport before learning of Scaramanga's plans thanks to the first of many improbable coincidences.

Bond makes some boneheaded moves over the course of the story, dithering ridiculously so Fleming or whomever can fill up some more pages. At one point, we learn he is being intentionally rude to Scaramanga and his killer crew in order to trip them up somehow. At another, he shows off his own gun skills by shooting a headdress off a frightened dancer. How this doesn't get him dumped off in a mangrove swamp is never clear, but it fills time.

Regardless, this is more a novella than a novel, and so lamely conceived it seems unlikely any of Fleming's normally diligent editing and revising could have made this anything other than the stinker it is. After taking on Blofeld and SMERSH, what's a gun-happy triggerman for hire?

The worst you can say about this book has already been said by "The JuRK" on this review thread: "The movie was better." Too true. Ian Fleming saved the worst for last.

To a certain extent, it feels unfair to criticize The Man With the Golden Gun, the last of Ian Fleming's original James Bond books. It is generally agreed that Fleming, seriously ill while writing this book, died before having a chance to rewrite his initial, sketchy drafts. The book itself was rushed out by Fleming's publishers and therefore, if it often reads like a first draft that's because it is.

This is the book that finds James Bond returning to MI6 after being briefly brainwashed by the KGB. Needing to redeem himself in the eyes of M (who, in this book's rushed characterization, is at his most coldly unlikeable), Bond is sent to take out international assassin Paco Scaramanga, whose trademark is that he kills with a golden gun. As said, the entire book reads like a sketch of an idea (a short story really) and Fleming's prose and dialouge are (through not fault of his own) rough and unpolished. However, the book does have a few good points that are all the more remarkable when you consider the duress Fleming was under when he wrote it. Scaramanga is a potentially fascinating character, a wonderfully image of James Bond as if reflected in a funhouse mirror. Indeed, it is hard not to feel that if Fleming had lived to write a second draft, Scaramanga would be remembered as one of his most memorable villians, in league with Dr. No and Goldfinger. As well, there is wonderfully elegiac about the book's final chapter where Bond spends a few pages considering his legacy as a secret agent and his future in espionage. Fleming, surely knowing that this would be his final novel, uses the chapter to sum up all that he had written over the past 15 or so years and it serves as a nice tribute for the fans of the original James Bond, confirming everything that made us a fan in the first place. The Man with The Golden Gun isn't a book that accurately reflects the depth of Fleming's talent or the potential of the literary James Bond but it still has a few shiny moments that shows why Bond has endured.

Seems like Mr. Fleming took the day (or week, or month) off when he wrote this one. Absolutely awful. Perhaps he was ill at the time, whatever the excuse, there IS no excuse for this sorry excuse of a book. Reads like something a high schooler would write. Scaramanga is the WORST Bond villain ever. Miss Goodnight is the WORST Bond girl ever. Bond fans, skip this one, it is literally unreadable bilge.

Ian Fleming would go to his home "Goldeneye" in Jamaica to write the rough draft for each Bond novel and then return to London to polish it up before sumission to Jonathan Cape Publishers. Unfortunately, while he did write the rough he died before he could go back and polish it up. So what you have is this: after the events of YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, having lost his memory and only a piece of paper with the word "Vladevostok" to guide him, Bond goes to Soviet Russia. Captured by the KGB and reprogrammed, over a year since he has disappeared has passed when he suddenly reappears and attempts to assasinate "M". An Explosive beginning and if only the rest of the book held up. It doesn't. Francisco "Paco" "Pistols" Scaramanga is a thug who disposes of his victims with a gold-plated single-action Colt Peacemaker. He is Russia's top killer in the Caribe and MI6 reprograms Bond and send him on his trail. A duel to the death in the swamp, a female assistant named Mary Goodnight. Not Fleming at his best, still a good read.

After James Bond is discovered to be alive, but brainwashed by the KGB (he was presumed dead at the end of "You Only Live Twice"), Bond is "reprogrammed" by the British Secret Service and sent off on a suicide mission to kill Scaramanga, the fastest gunman in the world, in order to prove himself once again.

I presume it was the new-found fame that did it. After writing such marvellous, well plotted books as "Doctor No" and "Goldfinger", it is as if Fleming gave up when writing the later James Bond books. I suppose that by that time, the money was practically guaranteed and even his shopping list would have sold. "The Man with the Golden Gun" is the second last of Fleming's fourteen Bond adventures and like "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "You Only Live Twice", it feels more like an extended short story than a fully developed novel. It's not just that it's shorter than the earlier novels; the level of detail of the earlier novels just isn't there. Furthermore, the villain and the "Bond girl", two of the main drawcards of the Bond series, just aren't up to par either. Although there is technically a "girl" in this book, in the form of Bond's former secretary, Mary Goodnight, she barely plays a part in the story, and although Scaramanga is a passable villain, he pales by comparison to Fleming's mega-villains such as Blofeld and Dr. No.

This is not a terrible novel. I enjoyed reading it. However, it is disappointing when compared to some of the previous novels. Read it, by all means, but not as your first Bond novel.

This last novel of British secret service agent James Bond did not reach print until after the 1964 death of Ian Fleming. And Raymond Benson mentions that the book was left unfinished at the time of Fleming's death.

The locale of this final story is split between London and Jamaica, with several villians: American crime organizations, Fidel Castro, and Russia. The intent of their evil is to harm world interests, especially with sugar crop in the Caribbean. The main characters of this novel are James Bond, Mary Goodnight, Pistols Scaramanga, and Felix Leiter.

The plot opens with Bond's attempt, while under KGB brainwashing, to assassinate M. After sorting that out, Bond is sent on a suicide mission to do what no one else has been able to do, kill the crack shot, Scaramanga. Sacramanga receives $1,000,000 for each contract hit he performs, and he is responsible for at least two 00 killings. All of this eventually culminates with a shootout on a train, with an eventual final shootout in a Jamaican swamp between Bond and Paco 'Pistols' Scaramanga. At conclusion of mission, recovering in a hospital, James is offered a knightship from the Queen, of which he sends reply to M. Is it to be 'Sir' James Bond or not?

As stated by Raymond Benson: this is the "weakest novel in series, lacks the rich detail from other novels; unfinished". I would also add that due to the uneven style of writing, the novel moves back and forth from interesting sections to be offset with some that are somewhat wordy, possibly of interest only to Ian Fleming, if in fact Mr. Fleming wrote the entire book.

Anyone interested in the Bond saga will find this necessary reading, however, most general readers will find this at best only a 3-star read.

And the movie released in 1974 doesn't resemble the novel at all: moving the locations to Hong Kong and Bangkok with the focus of the action on Scaramanga and Chinese interest in developing solar energy as a weapon. Almost two entirely different stories!

Ian Fleming was not at his best with this final writing, and the novel suffers from this, as to how an 'unfinished' book gets finished I have no info, but as a final legacy it is a testament to both Ian Fleming's durability and need to communicate one final time with his worldwide audience.

Semper Fi.

They say that all good things must come to an end. In the case of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, that end is with The Man with the Golden Gun. After this, there would only be a short story collection (Octopussy & The Living Daylights) to wrap up the set. Posthumously released (and supposedly concluded by a ghost writer), this book is generally considered one of the weaker of the Bond books, but I actually found it to be a pretty decent conclusion to the series.

The book opens by resolving issues left open in You Only Live Twice (so if you don't want that book spoiled, read no further). Bond, having suffered a head injury, has lost most of his memory and has wound up in Soviet hands, where he is brainwashed into becoming an assassin. His target is M (whose name is revealed to be Miles Messervy). The plot is quickly foiled and Bond is sent to a clinic to be straightened out.

To determine if Bond is still worthy of his 007 number, M dispatches him to Jamaica to kill Francisco Scaramanga, the title character who wields a special gold plated pistol. Scaramanga is one tough man, a sort of anti-Bond who is probably tougher than his hunter. A la Hamlet, Bond is a reluctant and hesitant killer, deferring his opportunities for finishing Scaramanga to instead infiltrate the Man with the Golden Gun's criminal enterprise. Eventually, like the Shakespearean character, procrastination will have to be replaced by action, leading to a showdown between the two.

This works well as a final Bond novel, with none of the open issues that marked other recent books. Scaramanga is a worthy adversary and there's a decent amount of action. On the other hand, this is a bit shallower of a book than the two previous novels (On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice) which both gave a deeper look into the British superspy. Overall, this is a good but not great book and a reasonably worthy conclusion to the Bond series.