DeTocqueville said it best:" To understand a country, one has to begin at the beginning. To understand a man, one has to follow him from the cradle on."

When Ian Fleming created James Bond, in 1952, whether he knew it or not he was creating a literary dynasty that has lasted to the present day. After fourteen published novels and collections of short stories, with Fleming's death, the torch was passed to Kingsley Amis for the single volume "Colonel Sun." Amis' involvement in the cleaning up and editing of TMWTGG makes him the closest thing we have to a Fleming collaborator, however Anne Fleming made certain that no one would ever have the chance to do THAT again.

Following "Colonel Sun," Christopher Wood was the next author to take a stab at retaining the Bond literary presence with his two books, "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "James Bond And Moonraker". Those are the specific titles in case one wishes to hunt them down. After that it took until" License Renewed" by John Gardner for the literary 007 to return.

Gardner managed to even outwrite Fleming for sheer numbers with sixteen tomes, all written with various success; then, in 1994, with Gardner finally running out of steam (he'd run out of ideas years earlier), Raymond Benson was suggested as the new James Bond author.

This was, to fans of the books, a Godsend as Benson had written one of the few volumes to attempt a rounded critique of the entire series of both books and films, "The James Bond Bedside Companion." While other Bond salutes had been penned, from John Brosnan's almost completely useless "James Bond in the Cinema, " a series of synopses disguised as a critique, to Amis' "The James Bond Dossier," the only true attempt to describe the character in scholarly terms, there was a specific dearth of material available to the general public that took the time to take in the film series and the books with equal care. This Benson succeeded at admirably, and with the announcement that he would be at the helm of the new Bond, fans breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

When Benson began, his writing experience was rather limited. He had penned a number of Computer/Role Playing Games manuals, including AVTAK and BOB, and was an accomplished musician and playwright, however by agreeing to take over the Bond mantle, he was stepping into what has to be called "virgin territory".

By Benson's doing so, we've been given a rare opportunity, the chance to watch an author form his body of work from the beginning.

A few notes before we begin. Because there are a myriad of reasons stories turn out the way they do, because excuses can be brought up for any literary malfunction, I've decided to stick entirely with the works as published. While I will attempt from time to time to delve into some of the reasoning behind certain choices, those choices having been made will be the gist of this article; not the author's intent, although that will come into play.

It's a hard thing to do, placing your imagination on the line. To take a thought, turn it into a story, and then place it in the public eye. It's even harder for a beginner, especially when you're stepping into another person's shoes.

While Fleming had his literary background as a journalist, Amis was one of the more notable English writers of the twentieth century, therefore when Amis stepped into Fleming's shoes it was simply an adjustment for fit, a specific alteration of Amis' own style to fit Fleming's.

Wood came from screenwriting, however he truly loved Fleming's work and tried his best to capture the so called "Fleming Effect", a term coined by Amis to describe the flow that Fleming managed, even in his least successful efforts, to create within his work.

Gardner came from his excellent Boysie Oakes stories. He knew how to write spy novels, and because of his Moriarty series of adventures, also knew how to continue another author's line of thought. It wasn't here that most of Gardner's stories failed to gel; it was in the fact that he dropped Fleming's style in favor of his own. While the adventures were still good, and there were a number of good Gardner works, they were simply too base, too simple in stylistic terms for the fan of Fleming's upper-crust ennui to accept. In other words, plotwise the books succeeded whereas stylistically they did not.

Finally, after the necessary background, we come to Benson. Being a Fleming aficionado, he understood the literary shoes he was stepping into, however, whether he knew exactly what he was getting into remains to be seen. Like a child, delicately placing his foot into his father's slippers, at the beginning there is definitely room for growth.

The reader will note that in the following discussion, I attempt to give as little of each story away as possible. Books are to be read, not used as coasters.

And so, we begin with the first Benson short story, BLAST FROM THE PAST.

To start with, the short story is a very specific creature. It's not a novel with a few pages cut out, it's a form that requires the practitioner understand scale, tempo, structure, and style. A form perfected by such authors as Poe and Hemingway is not something to be taken lightly. Fleming, in his short stories, follows these forms. His work is precise, even such tales as A Quantum Of Solace and Berlin Escape (The Living Daylights) carefully remain true to themselves and their illustrious predecessors.

It is into this august company that Benson was placed in 1994. Did he succeed? No. BFTP is more like the trailer for a film than a short story. It begins well enough, with Bond in his apartment, suddenly reminded that life has consequences and that he has a son. While this could be seen as the best sequence in the story, it also falls down to Fleming to keep the sequence moving. The literary allusions are heavy, the prose weak. And in a short story, the one unforgivable crime is that of weak prose.

While the situations titillate, the writing does not. The heavy handed sexuality of Irma Bunt seems more likely to be found in a late 60's Hammer film than a well crafted short story. The sudden ending, the MacGuffin of Bond's son tossed away literally like a bastard child left unclaimed, none of this works. Why? Because the writer doesn't know what he's doing. He's a beginner and rather uncomfortable with the restrictions of the form. As I said at the time, looking at Benson's sentence structure, his ability to get ideas across, his prose, there was no doubt in my mind that he would be much better served by long form fiction than he was by short story.

There is simply too much packed into BFTP for the piece to work. As an example, let's take the Fleming short story, From A View To A Kill. Fleming gives us one event, sets up the background for that event, presents his characterization, evokes mood, leads inexorably to the denouement, then closes. (The most important element is the presentation of a singular event). The same applies to some of the more lofty approaches to the short form, such as The Snows Of Kilimanjaro or The Old Man And The Sea, which by length alone transcends short story and becomes a novel although the same approach is used.

BFTP, on the other hand, gives us a series of events, gives each of those events a cursory explanation, and then becomes a triptych of familiar movie cliches tied together with speed that can only be described as "uncomfortable". Why? Because the author himself is uncertain where he's going. While he may have plotted the piece out quite carefully, it doesn't come together because he's trying to get too much into too little space. He's using novel form, which is much more expansive, in a short story and therefore, is doomed to failure.

Now, as this is subtitled an evolution observed, we have seen the beginnings of Benson's Bond. At the time of BFTP, Benson is a beginner and it shows. He's not had the time to get the feel of his own style and that is an awkward place to be in private much less in front of the entire Bond reading world. It takes quite a bit of bravery, not to mention bravado to begin one's career standing naked on stage in front of the entire planet, yet this is where Mr. Benson, by virtue of his taking on the mantle, has placed himself. It's cold up there, and the majority of people would simply cup their genitalia in their hands and try to shuffle offstage. It's to Mr. Benson's credit (and his theatrical background) that he continued on.

ZERO MINUS TEN

In my initial review of BFTP I stated that I thought Benson would improve by moving to the longer form. I was right. With his first novel, ZERO MINUS TEN, Benson took the first steps toward a style of his own. Small steps certainly, but steps nonetheless.

ZMT's main event is the handing over of Hong Kong to Mainland China. Fleming, in his Bond years, rarely placed his main character in a situation that required anything other than an internal clock, such as his mention in" Moonraker" that Bond had "eight years to go before he was automatically taken off the 00 list ". Benson begins his career as a novelist by bringing Bond into the present (actually, at the time, into the near future, a stunt that Fleming might have admired for sheer audacity's sake). As usual, there's an evil villain out to stop the transfer and besides an uncalled for journey to Australia, the plot holds together quite nicely.

Once again, as with Gardner, Bond is essentially lifted from the early 1960's and placed dark hair and all into the present. While this can be disconcerting, one must for instance remind oneself that Bond is a cold-warrior, that the world which Fleming allowed Bond to inhabit was post World War 2 Europe, and that things, and people, were the product of an eight year war. This is something modern people find hard to believe, especially in a world that demands unconditional victory before the end of the evening news.

Bond, the hard-edged secret agent, is now a bit older, although the grey flecks that Gardner tried to introduce into Bond's hair early in his series have now amazingly faded once again to black. He owns a small house in Jamaica called Shamelady and yet seems unable to leave his work at the office. A logical progression and handled quite well.

Benson's writing is more even, more flowing here than in BFTP. He's still feeling his way through the various forms, yet this is less forced than his previous effort. To put it succinctly, he's taken on the process and rather than fight it, as many authors do their first time out, he takes that process and embraces it.

Character-wise, ZMT is the first time since Amis' "Colonel Sun" that James Bond has appeared as anything more than a simplistic figurehead. Benson begins the process of turning the name back into the man he was when he started his literary existence in 1952. Bond is dark, angry at times, gets into situations that don't require a total suspension of disbelief (albeit a certain amount is required for almost any Bond adventure), and becomes involved in the requisite short term sexual relationship which Bond fans have come to expect.

Unlike Gardner's most horrific misstep, the aptly named Flicka Von Grusse, which still causes one to shudder after all these years, Sunny Pei is a Fleming-esque creation that almost succeeds. While I'll leave the essentials of her character to the reader, the fact is, after years of Bond's becoming involved with fellow agents, beautifully dressed young women who appear to never have seen the world outside of Tiffany's showroom, Sunny is a return to the women of Fleming. She's a semi-glorified Hong Kong prostitute with the proverbial heart of gold, but she works. If one is desperate for signs that Benson was improving, one only has to look at Bond's useless romantic interest in BFTP and compare it to the more fleshed out Sunny.

Plotwise, ZMT works, but once again, Benson was in the midst of his first novel and it shows. Looking back at Fleming's first, Casino Royale, one finds a rather basic plot which the author elevates by creating a surprising amount of tension surrounding a simple card game. With ZMT, Benson follows the "formula" and gives us twist after twist, as is the norm in most modern thriller writing. That he takes a few unnecessarily awkward steps getting us to the finale is to be expected.

With his next book, THE FACTS OF DEATH, Benson is more relaxed (not a lot, but the feeling is definitely there that the shoe is beginning to fit). He's taking his time and trying to get more comfortable with the concept that he is carrying on the literary tradition of a man he admires more than quite a few authors.

How?

First of all, with ZMT, Benson wrote about things that seemed like they should be in a James Bond novel. Examine that statement. SHOULD is the central concept. Hong Kong, Atomic weapons, beautiful women. There is little personal in ZMT, little which can be pointed to as "Benson's style". While this may be the result of Glidrose wanting a specific kind of book, more likely Benson, this being his first time out on the big track, was staying close to his source. It's much safer when working within a formula to stay within those guidelines. Expectations are met, rarely surpassed, but in general people feel they've been given "their money's worth."

It's after a first effort that growth HAS to show. TFOD begins to show that growth.

While to some, setting a Bond novel in Texas (Mr. Benson's former stomping grounds) may seem like a sell out, to me it was the first clue that the author was comfortable enough to personalize his series of stories. True, to fall back on a place or time one knows well can be construed as an easy way out, but one of the essentials of fiction/non fiction writing is to (every writer out there can say this with me) WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW.

Instead of going back to the SHOULD scenario, Benson moves forward. Fleming wrote about what he knew. England, Europe after the Great War. Gambling, drinking too much, womanizing. Exactly what one would expect. However, he also wrote about depression, not always getting the girl, pain, fear. These are things best written about through experience if one wishes to connect with an audience on a deeper level. As an example, John Updike is considered one of the better writers of the last half of the 20th century. How would he be considered had he left the academics and men trying desperately to cling to their earlier years behind and tried to write spy novels? He would have been absolutely flailing about in darkness. His style, his prose, his very ability to permeate even the simplest of sentences with emotion would have been rendered useless by the sheer fact that he writes what he knows and only what he knows.

Luckily, Mr. Benson has been handed all he needs to know about the spy world Fleming created. It is now up to him to take that world and add his own personal touch.

TFOD succeeds on a number of levels. Character is returned to the fore. Whereas Gardner threw out everything but the name James Bond, then hung entire novels on that name; Benson continues his attempt to keep Bond somewhat human.

To his credit, Benson is also trying to humanize the other major characters in the series, the plot involving M in particular gives us insight into Sir Miles' most recent replacement. A welcome change.

As to where TFOD doesn't succeed :

The Decada, Benson's first attempt at creating a SPECTRE-like organization, while being fun, doesn't quite come together. This is another example of SHOULD, however the shoulds in this book don't slow it down as much as the shoulds in ZMT. They're part of the learning process and things are improving story by story.

In all of Fleming's work, there is a consistent feeling that no matter what gadgets may be at hand, Bond is going to have to get himself out of the situation by the skin of his teeth, and sometimes that skin is tattered and torn before the story plays out. Amis kept that tradition going. Wood, by inevitably combining the Fleming Bond with the movie character, snapped the thread. Gardner was a gadget nut. With the introduction of Bond's Saab in "For Special Services," complete with an amazingly accurate floodlight behind the licence plate to blind enemies at just the right second, he fell into the YOLT (film) mode of always having the right tool at hand no matter the circumstances that immediately removed any chance at reality from his series of books.

For Benson, that misstep comes with the Jaguar XK8. While a perfect choice for a Bond car, expensive, semi-exclusive, beautiful and powerful, Benson gives the car so many abilities that it removes the fun of the old stand by, the car chase. Suddenly, this car can change colors and apparently heal bullet holes! Yet, two things stand out for me. Holographic projection and the undercar flying drone. Two horrific mistakes that take the literary Bond where he should never go, over the edge into near parody.

While I understand the author's intent to combine both the literary and filmic Bond in one, an excellent marketing strategy if naught else, the transition from semi-serious spy novel to comic book is disconcerting and throws an essentially engaging story off course. With the appearance of the villain's Ferrari's, ready to hunt down our hero's British built chameleon, one can almost hear the soundtrack to TLD playing in the background. It's time for James Bond to face the enemy and win by sheer guts. Instead, he wins by pressing a few buttons, destroying the enemy and driving on up the coast. The one point in the book that truly stops me dead in my tracks because of the sheer magnitude of the possibilities the author passes by.

More on this later.

And lastly, Felix Leiter. Racing across an open field in a wheelchair yelling "Yeehah!" The less said the better.

Overall, plot wise, the book comes together much better than most of the Gardner works. Benson's desire to create a world that this new hybrid Bond can exist within is palpable. He wants Bond to be as realistic as he can make him without turning our man out into the real world of espionage and this is a good thing. His Bond becomes grittier, more easily scarred in this novel, and that's because he places Bond in an already electric situation, the ongoing, some would say eternal conflict between Turkey and Greece. It gives the book a sense of tension and the ticking clock, which makes the story run.

"TOMORROW NEVER DIES (AND ALONG THE WAY THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH)

I'm skipping Tomorrow Never Dies, the same as I skipped GoldenEye. These are film adaptations and as such don't really fit into the literary canon. Although I will admit to not liking the film TND, the novel filled in so much of the almost non-existent plot of the film that I came away from the book with a better appreciation of the film. Not much better, but there it is.

Adaptation can be a difficult craft to learn, however Mr. Benson pulled this one off with exceptional care. As I assume he'll be adapting the rest of the films during his tenure as Bond author, I'm surprised to say I'll be looking forward to them whereas Gardner's adaptations of LTK and Goldeneye would choke a yak, three weeks dead.

A MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT'S DOOM

Is Benson's second attempt at the short story form. While he is getting the form down, it is a major step backwards in the author's evolution. Combining elements of marketing (The Playboy mansion, etc.) fawning diatribe (Bond meets Hef) and elements of his much better story HTTK, Benson once again falls into the trap of thinking that the short story is a lesser art form. For comparison's sake, take any of Benson's paragraphs in AMND and compare them to say the first paragraph of From A View To A Kill. The parity of style is non-existent. Once again, Benson is not a short story writer. The long form is where he belongs and should stay.

Wolf Mankowitz, the screenwriter, once told me that I would never be happy in theatre because I wrote with a larger scope in mind. That I should go into film because in that medium I could expand on the very elements that theatre was keeping contracted. I pass the same advice to Mr. Benson. He is definitely better served by the ability to relate a story within the larger scheme of things than by a style that is by it's very nature limiting.

And now we come to HIGH TIME TO KILL.

This is the book that turned the corner for me. Whereas before, watching Benson develop from uncertainty to novelist, I could give him a break because of his unfamiliarity with style, etc., I resolved with the adaptation of TND that his next book would and should stand on it's own merits.

From the beginning, with BFTP, moving upward through the rest of his work (with the notable exception of AMND), one could tell that the evolution of the writer was continuing, that with each book he was exploring new areas of his talent attempting to find his proverbial "niche".

With HTTK, he's found it, along with his voice.

Where does one begin? First of all, it's Bond nearly the way Fleming would have wanted him, not the temporarily sufficient secret agent that inhabited John Gardner's series of novels. Gardner always seemed desperate to get finished with Bond and back to Boysie Oakes or his interminable series of secret Generations novels.

This, happily, is not the case with Benson. Benson has managed something Gardner never even attempted. He has returned to James Bond the sense of adventure and character that had been sorely lacking for years.

High Time To Kill doesn't rely on previous characterization to do its work. It takes James Bond, adds to his initial characterization and goes one place that even Ian Fleming never took him. Into his past.

The story is complex, involving Skin 17, a material that allows airplanes to fly at incredible speeds without losing structural stability. A perfect MacGuffin with all the possibilities inherent. And for a change, the author sees those possibilities and acts upon them.

The Union, (think SPECTRE with a 90's splash of post Rambo ultra-violence) is a believable organization for a change, a definite step up from the seemingly toga-clad Decada of TFOD, with the ability to infiltrate even the hallowed halls of the SIS for its ill-gotten gains. This villainous group reaches back to the SPECTRE of Thunderball, a malevolent organization out for money. That's it. Money. Power is secondary. I like that. No undersea palaces, no space stations, no scheme to subjugate Asia, just pay us and we'll move on. Quite a welcome dose of reality, it gives Bond a faceless adversary that, if Benson continues with the concept, should lead to further episodes in the years to come and I will definitely be tuning in.

The only place Benson seems absolutely unsure of himself is at the beginning of the story. One can count the references to previous Bond adventures as they appear. Is this a sign that Benson is faltering? No. Whereas earlier Benson efforts were hampered by the author's desire to relate the new to the old, here they seem a little more natural. While Gardner seems to have fought desperately to sever the ties between his Bond and Fleming's rather sardonic hero, Benson tries a bit too hard to mend those ties. TMWTGG, A Quantum Of Solace, Goldfinger, and even Amis' Colonel Sun are brought to mind as the references come hard and heavy, but for the Fleming fan, there's little better than seeing the character we've followed for 46 years finally returning to the series after quite a few years off.

I'm not certain whether this is relevant or not, but I do have to ask whether or not Mr. Benson has ever played golf. His description of the game between Bond and Marquis is one of the weakest in the book and left me cold. While this could be because we have an opportunity to directly compare Benson's idea of golf (HTTK) to Fleming's (Goldfinger) and again to Amis (Colonel Sun), the scene never really gels. It doesn't have the feel of a real golf match between two characters as diametrically opposed as Bond and Marquis. Also, the details of the game itself are wrong, something that should never be allowed to take place, Bond novel or not.

The details of Bond's run in with Roland Marquis, (Flashman to Bond's Tom Brown), should be read, not described in a review, however it was an excellent turn of events to finally get some of the details on the infamous event that made Bond's hasty departure from school a necessity.

Needless to say, Marquis is one of the main villains in HTTK. Once again, Bond's villain is English, quite a change from the old days when Fleming seemed intent on presenting GB as the last bastion of civilization. Benson, an American, has less of the upper crust British Empire personae than his predecessor does and it shows in his choice of villains. Top man in his class at the aforementioned Cambridge, a highly placed English officer and the latest in a long line of erudite rogues that literature has always embraced wholeheartedly, he is the literary equivalent of 006 from the film Goldeneye. Easily Bond's match, possibly Bond's better.

And here is the rub. Bond KNOWS it! No matter what has transpired between these two men in the past, Bond knows that Marquis has bested him before and very likely will best him again. Late in the story, with Bond forced to join a mountain climbing expedition to the second highest peak on Earth, he's suddenly forced to face the fact that his childhood nemesis is a better climber, in better shape, and more than likely more knowledgeable than Bond himself. Quite a change from the Roger Moorish Bond as expert of all things that Gardner seemed to relish presenting.

It is here, with the beginning of Bond's journey into the Himalayas that Benson really begins to shine. While some of the description is a bit too pat, especially Bond's Ghurka assistant's sudden ability to sound like a travel brochure, Benson is finally coming into his own. While there are elements herein of The Eiger Sanction, Benson has learned to tell his story in a more straightforward manner. The mountain climbing sequences are taut, even suspenseful. There are even moments where the reader realizes, whether Bond does or not, that he's on a journey into his own past, into the deaths of his parents in a similar situation. True, the references are strongest for the long-time reader of the series, but they're there nonetheless.

Needless to say, the climax of the book is sheer adventure, however, this time, there is reason behind action, and the final revelation, for a change, comes with a tinge of self-discovery for our hero. Just a tinge, but so much more than we've seen since Colonel Sun that it remains memorable long after the book is finished.

Benson's writing? He's getting better, more confident, but even with HTTK one fault remains obvious. If there's one thing that would immensely improve the series as it stands, it's a strong editor. Benson has a habit of "coasting", allowing scenes to play out, then coasting until the next big scene begins. Every writer does it, God knows Fleming did, and no writer wants to admit it, but it's an easy trap to step into and Mr. Benson does so more often than he should. Until he can recognize these lulls and becomes comfortable critically perusing his own work word for word, he needs a good objective editor to tell him honestly when the storyline sags and when it stays even.

His wording is, as I've said before, less carefully chosen than should be. Unlike Fleming, who was absolutely confident in his choices, Benson is still feeling his way through. To put it more succinctly, Fleming played with words while Benson simply uses them. However, he has moments of absolute confidence and there are more of these in HTTK than ever before.

Whereas TFOD seemed dragged down by gadget-laden escapes, there's only one overdone sequence of events in this book, and amazingly enough it involves the Jaguar XK8 Bond mobile introduced in the previous tome. Once again, if James Bond is in danger, James Bond should get himself out of it, not Toshiba.

The last book, while fun, lacked the literary credibility that ZMT initially hinted at. This time, Benson has a firmer grasp of the storyteller's art. He feels comfortable with his own voice at last.

An enjoyable respite from the usual spy novel which, like it's film counterparts has sunken into technical gobbledygook and the inability to follow more than one character at a time, Benson allows us time with his villains. While the mystery as to who is the mole in the SIS is less a mystery than a foregone conclusion, it's the way he tries to handle the situation that saves the day. In one excellent section, one of the various villains finds himself in Casablanca (the city, not the movie). The description of the marketplace, the smell of the crowds, the disparity between the culture of the tourist, stuccoed mosques, antique shops, etc. and the real Casablanca one street over is Benson's best. It's the first section of any of his books that I've taken the time to read over.

Bond? He's almost back to Fleming. The feeling is almost there, but still lacks the confidence of phrasing that made Fleming, well, Fleming.

So, has Benson evolved? Definitely. His style, whether he knows it or not, while not being strictly inside the character himself, is nearly first person, giving us glimpses of Bond and the world around him from within the character himself. Gardner never even approached this amalgamation of author and creation. Fleming embodied it, making Bond a simple extension of his fantasy self. Amis dallied within the character, but one could almost feel him hold back, desiring to keep the prose and structure of Colonel Sun as close to his predecessor's archetype as possible. Benson is immersing himself in what we know of Bond, then expanding that knowledge in the best way possible for fans of the character. He's taken, at least with HTTK, the events that shaped Bond, the moments in his life that Fleming felt comfortable leaving beside the road with an offhand gesture, and used them as the basis for his redefinition of a man named James Bond.

And now we've reached full circle. Bond is almost where he belongs, Fleming has probably begun to spin with a bit less momentum than he had during the Gardner years, and Benson has finally discovered his own voice. We've watched the growth of a writer from his first short story through his fourth novel. It's an observed evolution and thus far Mr. Benson is coming through admirably. His own voice is beginning to show through and that voice is starting to flow.

As for me, I find myself comfortable with the concept that Bond will continue in his literary form. I take solace in the moments that Raymond gets exactly right, and I await his next book with the hope that he will continue to grow, become more confident and attempt to write THE Bond novel. There's still one to be written, there always is, and probably always will be.

Kenneth Clark, a priest I knew a long time ago, once said to me that man's greatest folly was his belief that at any given moment he is the pinnacle of evolution, that God is somewhere in the heavens sitting back and congratulating himself on having perfected the form. The cure for that concept, he said, is the simple fact that tomorrow you've evolved simply as an after effect of having existed the day before.

So, is Raymond Benson's evolution complete?

Ask me tomorrow.

Copyright ©1999, 2001 by Robert Cotton