Colonel Sun

"Chronologically speaking, Colonel Sun takes place shortly after the events of The Man with the Golden Gun . Bond is still recovering from a gunshot wound that he sustained from Scaramanga. It starts with him playing golf with his best friend in the service, Bill Tanner. And unbeknownst to them, they’re being watched. When Bond goes to M’s house, he finds that he has been kidnapped. The kidnappers try to attack Bond, but he gets away. So what drives the book is Bond’s search for M, his boss, and—some would argue—his father figure. What he takes from Fleming is writing about the culture. In this case, there is a heavy emphasis on Greece. The standout sequence in the book is definitely the torture that Bond goes through. Fleming had this great torture sequence in Casino Royale , where Bond is beaten in his genitals with a carpet beater. That’s always been the torture scene to beat in any Bond continuation novel. Piercing someone through the ear is also a very effective and harrowing torture sequence. The villain, Colonel Sun, is doing it just for his own sadistic purposes. He’s not trying to extract information from Bond. He just wants to hurt him for his own pleasure and curiosity. Yes, all these books have a globetrotting nature. Fleming was a journalist. He would describe these countries and cities and foods and drinks and clothes to the reader in a way that they could experience because they themselves might not ever get to go. It really was a way to take the reader with him. That’s why a different country and a different place is important to these stories. This is not one of the books I’m officially talking about, but I’ll briefly say that in the 1970s, there was a book called James Bond: The Authorized Biography by John Pearson . It was the story of Bond from birth all the way up to post-retirement from the service. In the book, he tells his life story to John Pearson, who knew Fleming in real life and who had written a biography of Fleming. The Authorized Biography came out in 1973 and is a curio in some ways. But other than that book and novelizations of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker , there were no new James Bond books in the 1970s. It was only in 1981 that John Gardner came along with Licence Renewed . It’s called Licence Renewed because it’s also renewing James Bond in the literary world. John Gardner went on to write 16 James Bond novels, including two novelizations. So Gardner wrote more Bond books than Ian Fleming himself. Then, after Gardner stepped down, Raymond Benson became the first American Bond novelist. Benson was a Bond expert who also wrote a book called The James Bond Bedside Companion (1984). He was friendly with Glidrose Productions (the name of Ian Fleming’s estate at the time). They discussed various ideas and approaches with him and asked him to submit chapters to write a James Bond novel. Benson was a first-time novelist and part of the process of him taking over the reins was that he had to go through a rigorous process to ensure that he could do it. No, it’s just that it’s hard to limit them to five. That’s why I wanted to mention Licence Renewed . Gardner brought Bond back into the literary world with a vengeance. His books were in the New York Times bestseller lists. And he updated Bond’s tradecraft. That’s one of the things Gardner wanted to do: update Bond’s tradecraft so that it would be relevant to that period of time. Prior to that, it’s talcum powder and little bits of hair or paper in the doors. If the door opens, they fall to the floor. Narratively, he departs from Fleming too. For instance, in Never Send Flowers, Gardner sets Bond against a serial killer."