No one has ever been
asked to continue the Matt Helm series, which seems a shame because
at the time, Donald Hamilton's Gold Medal originals were considered
by teenaged connoisseurs like myself to be far superior to James
Bond. Helm was earthy, and his enemies tended to be more realistic,
heavy on the Cold War and criminals and lighter on mad millionaires
or scientists bent on world domination. Helm also seemed to have a
more down-to-earth attitude toward violence, and killing. There was
no '00' designation in whatever service employed him.
Bond, on the other
hand, seemed more fantastical, and it appeared to be that quality
which sold them to the general public (that and the endorsement of
President Kennedy. JFK's reading Bond seemed much hipper than Ike's
fondness for Zane Grey). The early Bond movies, if anything, seemed
better than the books, catching a tongue in cheek flair without
Fleming's embarrassment, whereas Dean Martin's Matt Helm movies
ignored the grittiness of the Helm novels and were a reduction ad
absurdam of Bond.
So I was intrigued
when William Boyd's Solo arrived at the same time as one of Titan
Books' new editions of Matt Helm, another chance to match the two
super-spies against each other.
Literary writers
have been recapitulating Bond ever since Kingsley Amis in 1968 (Amis
had also published a study/defense of Bond three years earlier).
There's been a real difficulty for them, especially in terms of
continuity—do you go back to the Fleming Bond, or do you proceed
with the Bond of the movies—who tongue has moved progressively
deeper and deeper into the cheek with each new actor, and whose
current Bond, as played by Daniel Craig, is Vinnie Jones in a dinner
jacket, playing Texas Hold Em instead of chemin de fer, probably
drinking his Irn Bru from the can, slightly shaken if not stirred—or
do you come somewhere in between?After all, even Fleming modified his Bond to reflect the movies, giving him a Scottish backstory midway through the series.
Boyd has avoided all
that by going back to basic Bond, but putting him into a William Boyd
novel of colonial Africa. The book is set in the late Sixties, and
the conflict into which Bond is inserted resembles the Biafran War,
with Britain keen to protect its access to oil regardless of which
side wins. As you might gather from that synopsis, there's a touch of
moral questioning here, as if Bond weren't convinced enough of
Britania's rightness to jump out of a plane with a Union Jack
parachute, much less the Queen. At the same time, there are the
requisite Bond touches of exotic savoir faire, particularly as the
local station chief is a beautiful black woman named Efua Blessing
Ogilvy-Grant and the main villain is a disfigured Rhodesian mercenary
named Korbus Breed.
There's also a
dastardly millionaire behind the scenes, a far-fetched drug smuggling
sub-plot, and enough betrayal to make you feel right at home, because
when the story gets back to simple revenge we get Bond at his best.
It's the element of sado-masochism in Bond that explains a lot of
their popularity, especially in the early days, and although Boyd
obviously knows Africa well, it seems we're on firming footing when
it's Bond on a more personal mission.
There's some sadism
in Matt Helm too, since torture is part of the game, and more than a
little betrayal, as Helm appears to be sleeping with the enemy as
much to enjoy the risks as anything else. I didn't remember The
Devastators, originally published in 1965, at all, and that may be
because it isn't one of the better Helms. It's set in Britain, first
in London and then in remote Scotland, and perhaps I'm more critical
because I know the country better now than I did then.
It's strongest in
its first-person narration; part of the added realism of the series
was listening to Helm explain, without necessarily having to
rationalise, what he's doing. It also seems a bit prissy in its sex,
whereas Fleming, perhaps because he was writing a sort of fantasy,
rarely seems that way...though he keeps the tongue in cheek rather
than in other places. The one line I remember from Hamilton was the
one that seemed to come whenever Helm kissed a new woman: 'she knew
where the noses went'. I never quite figured that one out, but
mercifully it doesn't actually appear in this one.
If I had to guess, I
would think Hamilton was trying to nudge Bond in this novel, and
signals that by setting it in Scotland, where there's a mad scientist
type threat to civilisation as we know it with bubonic plague, no less. It's not fully successful, the book I mean, obviously not the plague,
and if you're interested in dipping into the Helms I'd suggest you
start with the first one Death Of A Citizen. But maybe we just can't
go back to where we were in the Sixties, when we were the good guys,
and sex was still something exotic in our reading. William Boyd gives
it a try, but perhaps he can't get back there either.
Solo: A James Bond
novel by William Boyd
Vintage Books,
£7.99, ISBN 978-0099578970
The Devastators by
Donald Hamilton
Titan Books, £7.99,
ISBN 9781783292882
note: This review
will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)
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