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The plod through the original printings of the James Bond books to see how they compare to the films continues. I’ve just finished Live and Let Die. (see previous: Thunderball; Casino Royale)

This one is very different to the film. To recap, Roger Moore’s first Bond sees him sent to investigate the murder of three British agents: Dawes at the United Nations, Hamilton in New Orleans and Baines on the Carribbean island of San Monique. In the course of his mission, he uncovers a heroin smuggling operation that will flood the streets of New York with free drugs, increasing the number of users while at the same time putting the competition out of business before jacking up the prices and raking a tidy profit.

In the book there isn’t a single mention of any kind of drug. Instead, the operation centres on smuggling pirate treasure from the island of Surprise.

Beyond the voodoo, and the magic tables that disappear through the floor of the Harlem bar to which Bond follows a lead early on, nothing in the book appears in the film, although two of the key scenes do make it into other screen Bonds.

The first is the part where Felix is fed to a shark, and in the process loses an arm. This crops up in License to Kill, arguably the most violent (and disappointing) of all the Bond films, and the only one to earn itself a 15 rating. It was probably seen as too gorey for audiences of 1973, when Live and Let Die was released.

The second takes place towards the end of the book, when Mr Big determines that he will kill Bond and Solitaire by dragging them through the water behind his boat, so that the sharks and baraccuda will eat them alive. This later appeared in the film of For Your Eyes Only, and indeed, some of the original dialogue made the leap from the book of Live and Let Die to that film, too:

Mr Big had a last look at them.
‘Their legs can stay free,’ he said. ‘They’ll make appetizing bait.’

Eventually, by the time it makes it to the screen in For Your Eyes Only (1981), it is Aristotle Kristatos who watches his henchmen tying up Bond and Melina Havelock, and utters the nigh-on identical line, ‘Leave the legs free. They’ll make appetizing bait.’

The book hasn’t aged well. Although it remains well written and, like all of the Bond books, is a far more relaxing and uneventful work than any of the films, its language is hopelessly outdated, and much of the racial descriptions and assumptions are little short of offensive today.

We do learn two things about the characters that aren’t revealed in the film, though… Solitaire’s real name is Simone Latrelle. She is 25 and was nicknamed Solitaire because she showed no interest in men. And Whisper has so much trouble speaking because he has only half a lung, having been born into the badly polluted streets of a poor New York neighbourhood:

‘Yes, Boss,’ he said softly into his headphone. He couldn’t have spoken any louder if he had wished to. He had been born on ‘Lung Block’, on Seventh Avenue, at 142nd Street, where death from TB is twice as high as anywhere else in New York. Now he only had part of one lung left.

In all, not a bad read. An entirely different story to the film itself, and for that reason alone, worth a go.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 23rd, 2005 at 8:44 pm and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.