The Man with the Red Tattoo Book

The Man With The Red Tatoo is the latest of Raymond Benson's continuation of Fleming's James Bond series. Bond is back in Japan investigating mysterious deaths and elbowing his way into trouble. Like all of Benson's series, and indeed the recent Bond films, it tones down the high-octane sexism and snobbery of the original a little, in the name of making Bond contemporary; it is not just in terms of the actors playing him that Bond is no longer quite the man he once was. Benson is a more thoughtful writer than Fleming, which leads, on the one hand, to some over-extended clumps of exposition in which he explains the right-wing politics of Japanese organized crime or the life-cycle of genetically-engineered mosquitos, but on the other hand to real conviction in his villains' motivations. Fleming created florid villains who were memorable because mythic; Benson's are credible because he makes us understand them--it's doubtful a Fleming villain would ever have quoted Mishima. Similarly, where the deaths of Fleming's heroines were a routine gesture, the fate of one of the "Bond Girls" here is genuinely upsetting. Where Benson most effectively follows Fleming's lead is in action sequences--Bond tied in the path of a bullet train and Bond dancing his way to safety in a burning lava-field. --Roz KaveneyRead More