Devil May Care

Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks was specialy commisioned by the owner of the late Ian Fleming's literary estate to commemorate his birth on 28th May 1908. The idea was to ignore the plethora of film versions and return to the time of the Cold War in which Fleming set his original novels. Furthermore Faulks was supposed to copy the writing style of Fleming and was no doubt entrusted with this task because of the high regard in which he is held in literary circles. Whether he did manage to copy Fleming's style I could not say as it has been many years since I read one of his books. However, there is a world of difference between the novels for which Faulks is justly famous and the kind of action adventure story with which Fleming thrilled the nation's readers. Faulks includes all the usual ingrediants, a villain with unusual physical characteristics, a murderous assistant, a plot of world-ranging scope and an organisation exploiting cutting edge technology. To counter this Bond has a Walther PPK, a handful of local agents and a beautiful girl. So far so good. Unfortunately in Faulks hands it does not quite work. Perhaps it was Fleming's background of genuine intelligence work that gave him the edge over someone who only has his imagination to go on but I just did not get the kick out of Devil May Care that I did out of Fleming's books. That being said I still read it through to the end which I would not have done had it been truly disappointing. A good try.