The Spy Who Loved Me

The Spy Who Loved Me (1974) by Ian Fleming – Pan Books

James Bond has had many introductions.

Usually there is a casino.

Possibly a beautiful woman.

Almost certainly a villain with a private island, an expensive suit and a deeply unreasonable plan.

The Spy Who Loved Me does things rather differently.

Ian Fleming’s 1962 novel, presented here in this 1974 Pan Books edition, is one of the strangest and most unusual entries in the Bond series because much of the story is told not from Bond’s point of view, but through the eyes of a young woman whose life becomes considerably more complicated the moment 007 arrives.

And complicated is putting it mildly.

Vivienne Michel finds herself stranded at an isolated motel, where the situation rapidly deteriorates from awkward to dangerous as a pair of thoroughly unpleasant men arrive with intentions that are very far from customer service.

Then Bond appears.

Naturally.

Because when you are trapped in a remote motel with violent criminals, the ideal solution is apparently to have Britain’s most famous secret agent wander in at exactly the right moment.

Fleming uses the unusual perspective to give the book a different flavour from the more familiar Bond adventures. There is less globe-trotting espionage spectacle and more psychological tension, vulnerability and menace.

It is Bond seen from the outside.

Which is interesting, because from inside Bond’s own head, he is usually busy thinking about guns, cards, food, drink, women, fast cars and the possibility that somebody may shortly attempt to kill him.

From somebody else’s perspective, he is simply a highly dangerous man who has suddenly appeared in the middle of a nightmare.

That makes The Spy Who Loved Me stand apart from the rest of the series.

It is smaller in scale, more claustrophobic and more personal.

There are no giant laser-equipped satellites.

No volcano bases.

No henchmen with implausible dental arrangements.

Just a remote location, criminal violence, fear and the arrival of a man who has made a career out of being extremely difficult to murder.

For Bond collectors, the novel is especially interesting because Fleming himself had mixed feelings about it. He regarded it as something of an experiment and was reportedly dissatisfied with the result, yet that experiment i

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