Colonel Sun
Napoleon Plural
LondonPosts: 11,063MI6 Agent
I have nearly finished Colonel Sun by Robert Markham aka Kingsley Amis, first published 1968. I was prompted to read it in some part by - I think - @Silhouette Man who had to inform me about a cruel and unusual punishment or torture inflicted on Bond by the titular character; having had a paperback copy sat on my book shelves for some decades I felt a bit ashamed at not having read it. After all, I've read every recent continuation novel since, oh, Devil May Care wasn't it, but not this one.
When I first picked up the paperback at a second-hand bookshop or junk shop of the kind they had in the late 70s-mid 80s, I only read the opening chapters and was a bit put off by its intro - not a ski jump off a mountain to reveal a Union flag parachute (in fact, author Kingsley Amis was disgusted by this pre-credits punchline) but the abduction of Bond's boss M, and the murder of his housekeepers. Okay, I'd read a bit of Fleming so I knew it wasn't all gadget-laden cars and stunts but this pushed things a bit too far, it was a bit grim.
What also might have put me off was the cover - very much of its time, I guess but not quite right, not setting a realistic scene, is it? I guess they were moving on from those old classic Pan paperbacks, the cover is a bit modish, it tries to hide the idea that Bond is yesterday's action hero, at least in the literary world, but possibly also in the film world, the reason Lazenby cited for giving up the role the following year. A model posing as Bond in a white dinner jacket, aiming his gun at an 'inscrutable' Oriental, something about it putting one in mind of those dodgy curio LPs of the time, featuring covers of John Barry spy sounds, and would-be Bonds posing.
For this reading, I went for a hardback copy with this cover:
Now, what Markham - Amis, as we later found, was this common knowledge at the time? - had in common with continuation authors of recent years is that he had his own success and author's voice, so the question is if it's a good idea to have such a writer acting on commission, where they have to write as someone else and essentially suppress their voice. You can see them going along with it before the shoes being to pinch and they begin to hobble awkwardly to the finishing line; Faulks was particularly bad at this, I thought, it was like he couldn't wait to get it over with as he took Bond through Moscow via some aerial action scene to make his escape back home, phew! With a dig at Rupert Murdoch for good measure, as if breaking character.
This happens only occasionally with Amis, just once in a while you find yourself thinking, well, where's this going and does it really matter anyway, moments where the thread is lost.
I will offer some praise for Colonel Sun. It helps that Amis actually met Fleming, having written his anthology of praise (is that right?) in The James Bond Dossier, all about Fleming's books, and Amis was a massive fan. I understand on the back of this he tarted up and amended Fleming's unfinished The Man With The Golden Gun, to what extent is something of a mystery. So what Colonel Sun has is a certain authenticity that other continuation novels lack.
Amis captures Fleming's style pretty well, but a few sentences early on jar and it's annoying, it's as if it's deliberate. A reference to Bill Tanner, 'his best friend in the Secret Service' - no, no, that's not right. What, does Bond pop round his friend's house and ask his mother if Bill can come out to play? You could convey the same thing with better wording.
Later, Amis writes of a nearby airport with budget travellers taking the working classes to faraway climes - now this is pure Fleming for sure, but it's the sort of thing Fleming would think, and not write because it's very snobbish and he'd be aware that he's writing for these people, even though he wouldn't want to mix with them.
But Amis does something that very few of the other authors do - he writes the literary Bond and eschews any attempts to pander to the movie Bond. There is no tearful Moneypenny crowbarred in, no visit to Major Boothroyd's workshop, no time for any of that stuff. This helps massively because it also allows Amis to give the prose depth, something you can't very well do when you are trying to write action; what can be shown in three minutes onscreen takes 15 pages of prose; it can't be done. Again, Faulks was the main offender here. (But so was Horovitz, most notably in his last one, the blandly titled A Mind to Kill, which contradicted or nullified the events of this book. Don't get me wrong, it was a decent effort and had all the scope and ingenuity that is lacking here, but it was frightfully busy and non-stop, so much that it couldn't be actually confused with a Fleming novel.)
And the prose is often very good.'It was a beautiful morning. Out at sea the rising meltemi was blowing the tops off the waves, but off the southern shore of Vrakonisi it did no more than impart a pleasing sense of motion to the slightly flawed surface of the water, as if a giant mirror of liquid blue stone were perpetually moving south and perpetually renewing itself from the edge of the land' opens chapter 12.
But it isn't Ian Fleming. And that's the problem.
I picked up a copy of From Russia With Love recently and started reading, the meeting of the KGB as they discuss their next plan, which turns out to be the elimination of Bond. It's just great prose, but with a real guilty pleasure vibe, an irresistible combination. (Perhaps coincidentally, the most moving, stirring I should say bit of Colonel Sun is a whole chapter devoted to the thoughts of a foolish, over promoted Russian Colonel-General).
Fleming's prose is like an afternoon cup of tea, or a glass of your favourite wine, the needle dropping on a much-loved single, your favourite soft porn magazine, it's Christmas, all rolled into one.
But it's more than that. Having established your comfort zone, having set that 'Are you sitting comfortably, now we can begin' tone, Fleming then adds something new and spicy. It's a cup of tea - with a new exciting Bourbon biscuit. Your favourite wine - but from a bottle with an untried label, or poured in a new exciting new location. A porn mag but with your favourite model in a new, provocative pose. Your comfort zone is established, and then within that, the danger or excitement or eroticism or newness is added.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
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Now, the thing about Amis, the thing that puts me off this novel generally is the very thing that put me off all those years ago.
It's the abduction of M.
The M character is really about establishing our comfort zone. In one fell swoop, Amis undermines this with this opening gambit. So from thereon, things feel a bit edgy. That's not all, because it also does rather highlight the possibility that M is not really a credible character and that only becomes apparent when taken outside his particular context. You cannot really be sure he exists much beyond his own world - that's Bond's job. And you get this struggle with other continuation novels too, the M character doesn't quite seem plausible, particularly these days because you can't quite be sure such a type exists anymore.
Again, the honorouble exception being Christopher Wood's depiction in his film tie-ins - M is suddenly not unlike the era of politicians in that day; Callaghan, or Wilson etc.
One problem is that the opening is a bit of a gimmick on which the rest of the book hangs, and it's really for all that a McGuffin. It slightly makes a mockery of the indulgent side of Bond's existence as he enjoys his food in Greece or takes his pleasure in his new leading lady, as you sort of think, well, hang on, what about poor old M? The author cuts away to the villain and his dealings with M, who disappointingly calls him 'a yellow bandit', careful mate you're about to get cancelled.
Another thread talks of the brutality of this novel but I don't see too much of this so far, perhaps it's all at the end? Again, Fleming's prose was like a warm bath so when some complained about his sadism, what perhaps they really meant was that you actually enjoyed reading his depictions of violence, rather than the acts of violence themselves.
Another snag is that this is a hero out of time a bit, this is the era when sex was becoming more frank and Amis takes us through the deed alright but perhaps it's like seeing Brosnan's Bond 'do it' in Die Another Day, it feels a bit artless. The writing of this isn't bad, and the passage I quickly alighted upon as a teenager, but the sentence that jars, after watching Ariadne seductively undress is 'there was nothing leisurely about Bond's undressing' which is quite funny I suppose but it just doesn't sit right, it highlights the possibility that Bond, like the reader, was watching on gormlessly while she got her kit off. There's the sense that in this new era of violence - and sex - it can all be spelt out rather than strongly suggested, and we know the difference, it's like when the later Carry Ons tried to compete with the Confessions movies, or The Man With The Golden Gun played it broad and had Chew Me explaining she has no swimming costume. It's doing to James Bond what James Bond did to the Hitchcock films, well just come out and say it why don't you.
Another criticism is that in many ways John Pearson's 'biography' of James Bond just feels a bit more vivid, sexy and seedy than all this. I do recommend that one. It embellishes and outlines some of the incidents mentioned in Fleming's books so effectively that when I recall it, I sometimes think it came from Fleming, in particular his early affair with some French woman who is later revealed to be a traitor. Again, of its era, the writing lacks the charm of Fleming, the warmth, but it hits the spot, when it doesn't lapse into ridiculousness.
Incidentally, was there ever an early 70s 'still-life' cover of Colonel Sun, of the kind pictured above with James Bond: The Authorised Biography? I can't find one.
I will break off now and complete this later this evening.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
And one plot hole is this - how come on an exchange trip there's just the one teacher there? And surely with a schoolgirl going missing, the press would be all over it by day three? Oh, sorry, that was Channel 5 drama Missed Call, which I watched this evening.
But it's the same premise - someone goes missing, another goes looking for them. But while Missed Call is your usual trashy Five offering, there'll be plot twists and plot holes a plenty by the final episode I'm sure - it does at least drop in a few teases, a few clues. Was she being trafficked? Who is in on it? The host family? The police? The teacher? Colonel Sun doesn't really do much of that at all and I'm not sure I care much about what happens to M, though I did decades ago check ahead to the finale, so maybe that's the reason.
But while I like the book, it is caught between two stools - it ought to be a page turner so each chapter ends with a cliff hanger - the recent Bond novels tend to do this, but if you do that, you can't do the the sort of prose that you savour, like Fleming.
On a recent thread about Bond films you like to revisit most, I said I like the episodic Bond films. Ones where there is a change of scene every 10 minutes. They do tend to replicate the feeling of picking up a Bond book at any point and finding you can just start reading. Tune in to something like DAF or YOLT and chances are you'll get a sex scene with a bit of witty dialogue leading up to it, or a death scene with a bit of witty dialogue leading up to it. Or an action scene. Or a space scene. Or maybe the song - damn, I missed the pre-credits! Some films don't offer that - like LTK imo. Something memorable and classic.
Over the years I've never been able to pick up Colonel Sun and just start reading, it doesn't do it for me, it's not vivid in that respect. It doesn't do individual scenes of interest. You can read it from start to finish and it's a decent book, but... I mean, The Man With The Golden Gun gets a bum wrap but there are some scenes that are memorable for all that - Bond's attempted hit job on M as the opener, the premise of being hired by Scaramanga, which offers suspense, Bond's smuggling of Goodnight into his room, the con of having her tied to the railway tracks and how that pans out, Scaramanga's hypnotic prayers in the swamp in the finale. It hits those beats and while the writing feels a bit trashy compared to the writing here, I do remember those scenes decades on, and I don't know if I'll remember anything of this.
Because if it weren't a Bond book I'm not sure the plot would be that interesting. It just doesn't have much scope. If anything, it resembles Ian Fleming's short stories in that regard. M goes missing, Bond flies out to Greece on a clue which is likely deliberately placed, and puts himself in harm's way. Well, he did it in FRWL I suppose. He stays in Greece for the rest of the book - though readers should be made aware that the book does offer a map to readers to show where the location of the various islands are, which helps (see below). But again, you read it because it is a Bond book, and tbf this is Ian Fleming's Bond here, you feel it, but if it weren't for that, you wouldn't bother - which imo puts it in the category of certain Bond films like License to Kill or those ones which will never recruit a newcomer to the cause.
There's little sense of past chronology here, I think there's a reference to Scaramanga's damage but you don't pick on the weariness of an agent whose been through so much, something that infused so much of the later novels. No mention of Tracey, for instance. Mostly, you feel it could exist as a standalone, it doesn't have that sense of autumn that it might have, the suggestion of depression or despondency, though there is an acknowledgement of it in the opening chapter. Without that, Bond here seems just slightly bland.
We're near the end and Bond hasn't met the villain yet. He hasn't engaged with much proper villainy at all, just some thugs and fisticuffs. He meets a Greek guy from the former resistance or something with whom he charters a boat. The usual Fleming beats aren't quite here. It all takes place very quickly, in a short time frame. Shorter, perhaps, than any Fleming novel? There's just one love interest, Ariadne, and she's okay but doesn't have that quirky flaw that Fleming Bond women have. She's a real person I guess but there's nothing too exotic about her, nothing that feels challenging or provocative. There are, however, some nice observations about local customs and characteristics, you do feel that Amis did his research and actually went to the locations.
I will finish this book this week and will enjoy it I'm sure but I'm not exactly racing to the end.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Thanks for the mention, @Napoleon Plural. I'm still working on that old article idea of mine on the increased violence and strange demise of the villain in Colonel Sun. It's partly written and I've written a ton of notes on it since. Your excellent observations here could well get me to dig the novel out again and finish what I've started! You've mentioned a lot of things regarding this novel that I hadn't thought of or even considered before so thank you for that. As I've said on here and elsewhere (even on Spybrary) I think Colonel Sun is the best James Bond continuation novel by a country mile. I'll await your concluding post or posts on the novel before making a more substantive reply to your comments.
Well, I finished Colonel Sun over the weekend but your comment that it's 'the best James Bond continuation novel by a country mile' has put me off reviewing this in conclusion, though I guess you might be damning with faint praise.
The final pages introduce us to our old friend Basil 'Reverse' Exposition as various characters pop up in an Embassy or somewhere, friends and former foes, to explain to the reader what has just happened and why. Some of the characters, allies of Bond in his adventure, I couldn't quite recall. I'm not sure any Fleming book ends like that though I imagine some Gardner books might. This is Amis the academic, having to make sure all the loose ends are tied up. To be fair, it is written in the Fleming style, he takes care to ensure that the characters are not just cardboard cutouts to get from A to B, at least not too obviously.
But it's odd because this really is one of the more straightforward plots but it gets tied up in knots anyway.
What I missed in this, is that it's quite worthy, don't get me wrong, but there's not any guilty pleasure to be had here. So sense of glee, no sense of 'I'm going to make something up now for the fun of it!' which is also a hallmark of Tarantino's films.
Nor is there a key element of the Fleming books - the depressive tone. One sensed that the pleasures Bond indulged in - food, drink, luxury consumer items, sex, sports like skiing and scuba diving, fast cars - all vices, really, were to push that to the back. Without it, any writer dutifully ticking off the activities Bond likes to do seems to be doing only that, paying lip service. I think Alan Clark's political memoirs might be a modern equivalent of all this, reading them you get the same sense of malaise.
I suppose I'm getting into spoiler territory now.
@Silhouette Man praised the climax and I kept finding the distance between my thumb and second finger get reduced as the book went on and Bond still hadn't encountered Colonel Sun, is this the briefest encounter between Bond and the main villain of any book? I suppose the book You Only Live Twice might rival it. Or the Spang Brothers in Diamonds are Forever.
I observed in a previous post that M just doesn't seem quite convincing out of the office and in this book the way he is just dispensed with, it's incredible. He and Bond are reunited almost off page, there's no dialogue at all, Bond may as well be picking up a framed photograph of him. It's just like, okay, here you are then. No 'Thank you, James...' It's like the writer doesn't know how to deal with it. What was Sun doing with M anyway? Was the plan all along to kidnap Bond at M's house, but as he arrived late he made do with M, to use as bait? So not to get any secrets out of him then? I think that is explained at some point.
The torture scene at the end was lifted directly for Spectre, even down to the dialogue and the way Bond escapes. Are they allowed to do that? Did they pay Amis' family for it, or is it part of the Ian Fleming Foundation?
Now, the problem I had was this is that the torture scene made me feel sad and depressed and unhappy. Not in Spectre, but here. It really does seem the sickest thing ever, for a villain to get Bond all that way simply so he can torture him in great detail, sort of like a scene from the Hostel series. Now, you may think I've got all soft in my years but it's not that - in the last week I saw the slasher movie Jennifer's Body which has all kind of silly sick stuff in it, but again, there's s bit of comedy glee in it, you can't take it seriously, so it's okay.
Here, Bond's torture has no redeeming aspect to it. It's like the difference between a Grimm fairy tale, and reading an account of the real-life Moors Murderers. Sure, Bond gets tortured in other situations but then it's to elicit information (Casino Royale) or revenge for interfering, it's kind of personal (Goldfinger) or it has some kind of elaborate fantastical aspect to it, like a slow death (the film of Live and Let Die).
The whole plan of the villain's plot here is to torture Bond, nice isn't it.
There's some other plan to wipe out a room full of top Russians. We don't see much of this largely because Bond forestalls it. So was this Sun's plan - that's a busy weekend, isn't it. Two for the price of one, torture a Brit, and murder some Russians. It's not very high-minded or ambitious. Who was he working for? Just himself?
Sun bangs on about how it's important that Bond's sexually voracious appetite should be tended to in the last minutes of his life. I don't know, I'm not sure that's what you want when you're about to shuffle off your mortal coil, thoughts of sex. I thought someone on this site suggested the idea was Bond would at the time of death have an erection that would heighten the pain or something - the very thing I'm slightly ashamed to say that had me intrigued enough to read this book. I didn't catch any reference to that here. Anyway, it does sort of tip into the legend of Bond rather than the actual guy, I mean how is the villain to know that sex is his main outlet in life? Lucky guess, I suppose, but it reminds me of Fatima Blush trying to blag a signed endorsement of her love-making prowess from the great lothario himself in Never Say Never Again. It all seems a bit knowing, a bit silly, a bit self-referential. I suppose it harks back to the days when sex was this big deal, seen as a sort of a strange demonic vice, something off centre, rather than the stuff of life itself.
Ah well, it's a worthy read though that's the problem. It's odd how well Christopher Wood wrote his books, there's a feeling that a Bond book shouldn't really be this hard.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
It's a weird one. I re-read it a couple of years and I remember it starts well, but just as I remembered from the first time I read it, it hits a massive flat spot when Bond starts sailing boats around the Med and never really recovers. I remember the geography of the island and house are very important from the way he describes Bond's final assault there, but I couldn't make head nor tail of where anyone was. Also there's a strange feeling that the Russians are slightly sympathetic in this one, and Bond ends up saving them- that didn't feel very Fleming at all.
'Weird'? Perhaps you read this piece in The Guardian which suggests Colonel Sun is the weirdest Bond book of all. It touches on Amis's political sympathies re the Vietnam War; I'd have to read it again to infer how that makes him more sympathetic to Russia, but there is a dig in the book about the torture techniques of the North Vietnamese, I think. Now, this sort of thing was done in Tomorrow Never Dies with Dr Kaufman, and a lot better in my view, it was one of the good things about the film because the torture had a make-believe thing going on that isn't here.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2018/mar/28/colonel-sun-kingsley-amis-james-bond-novel-ian-fleming
Faulks let his politics get into his Bond book too, so in a way did Fleming with his jibes at the Germans, but I do think it was relatively low key - his real fear of a resurgent Germany was voiced in his travel anthology Thrilling Cities.
You're quite right about not being able to make head nor tail of the action - Amis goes to some lengths to describe the scene, the terrain, but it's a very odd thing - that isn't the key to a novel. Rather than giving the reader all the information rather you should provide a few dashes here and there to allow them to conjure an impression in their minds with no effort.
One other thing - this lacks the requisite melancholy of a Fleming novel, possibly because Amis was under instructions to make it fresher, it was meant to be a new series with 'Robert Markham' as the marketing name for all of them. So best not to get bogged down.
I do think that Roald Dahl might have made a good Bond novel but I think that stuff was beneath him by that point, and he did his stint on YOLT.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I don't think this was your intention @Napoleon Plural but you've made me feel like reading the bloody thing again. Maybe my battered Panther copy should get an airing. Love this Girls n Guns cover...
Yes, it’s kinda done the same for me as well 🤭
Same here. I've been meaning to re-read the novel for a long while so this is as good a chance as any to do it. I've read it twice before but it's a long time ago now. It'll hopefully mean I can give better replies to the points raised as it'll refresh my memory of the novel. I just hope that my enthusiasm for Colonel Sun didn't put you off your stride in your review, @Napoleon Plural! There are definitely a lot of differing opinions within the world of James Bond fandom as my love for the John Gardner Bond novels and especially Never Send Flowers shows. Still, warts and all, I wouldn't have it any other way. That's what makes it all so interesting to discuss.