Devil May Care
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
Thank you Amazon for the picture
“It was a wet evening in Paris. On the slate roofs of the big boulevards and on the small mansards of the Latin quarter, the rain kept up a ceaseless patter. Outside the Crillon and the George V, the doormen were whistling taxis out of the darkness, then running with umbrellas to hold over the fur-clad guests as they climbed in. The huge open space of the place de la Concorde was glimmering black and silver in the downpour.
In Sarcelles, on the far northern outskirts of the city, Yusuf Hashim was sheltered by the walkway above him. This was not the gracious arch of the Pont Neuf where lovers huddled to keep dry, but a long cantilevered piece of concrete from which cheap doors with many bolts opened into grimy three-room appartements. It overlooked a busy section of the noisy N1 and was attached to an eighteen-storey tower block. Christened L’Arc en Ciel, the Rainbow, by its architect, the block was viewed, even in this infamous district, with apprehension.
After six years of fighting the French in Algeria, Yusuf Hashim had finally cut and run. He had fled to Paris and found a place in L’Arc en Ciel, where he was joined in due course by his three brothers. People said that only those born in the forbidding tower could walk its airborne streets without glancing round, but Hashim feared nobody. He had been fifteen years old when, working for the Algerian nationalist movement, the FLN, he took his first life in a fire-bomb attack on a post office. No one he had ever met, in North Africa or in Paris, placed much value on a single life. The race was to the strong, and time had proved Hashim as strong as any.”
All right who here is a James Bond fan? Oh me, Pick me! Whether it’s watching the latest James Bond movie or reading a new James Bond novel I am your girl. Devil May Care written by Sebastian Faulks.
Devil May Care is a masterful continuation of the James Bond legacy–an electrifying new chapter in the life of the most iconic spy of literature and film, written to celebrate the centenary of Ian Fleming’s birth on May 28, 1908.
An Algerian drug runner is savagely executed in the desolate outskirts of Paris. This seemingly isolated event leads to the recall of Agent 007 from his sabbatical in Rome and his return to the world of intrigue and danger where he is most at home. The head of MI6, M, assigns him to shadow the mysterious Dr. Julius Gorner, a power-crazed pharmaceutical magnate, whose wealth is exceeded only by his greed. Gorner has lately taken a disquieting interest in opiate derivatives, both legal and illegal, and this urgently bears looking into.
Bond finds a willing accomplice in the shape of a glamorous Parisian named Scarlett Papava. He will need her help in a life-and-death struggle with his most dangerous adversary yet, as a chain of events threaten to lead to global catastrophe. A British airliner goes missing over Iraq. The thunder of a coming war echoes in the Middle East. And a tide of lethal narcotics threatens to engulf a Great Britain in the throes of the social upheavals of the late sixties.
I like how Faulks picks up where Fleming left off, taking Bond back to the height of the Cold War in a story of almost unbearable pace and tension. Devil May Care not only captures the very essence of Fleming’s original novels but also shows Bond facing dangers with a powerful relevance to our own times.
O.K. now off you go and find yourself a martini shaken not stirred and read this book. While I go off to find another great adventure.
Happy Reading
Sarah