“Those who deserve to die, die the death they deserve.”
The second of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels takes us on an unusual adventure across the United States and onward to Jamaica where Bond tracks a criminal named “Mr. Big,” a fearsome crime lord with ties to an underground voodoo cult linked to the notorious Soviet counterintelligence agency which was introduced in Casino Royale, SMERSH (short for Smyert Spionam or “Death to Spies”). Live and Let Die concerns Mr. Big’s somewhat amusing scheme to smuggle 17th century pirate gold from Jamaica to the United States in order to finance his illicit operations (the gold is actually Henry Morgan’s legendary treasure found in Jamaica). With money on the line and danger afoot, James Bond is sent to investigate.
Who is Mr. Big? He is a 45-year-old black Frenchman involved in a strange voodoo death cult in America. His true name is actually Buonaparte Ignace Gallia and he is a known agent of SMERSH. When informed of the situation, the SMERSH connection piques Bond’s interest as he recalls the brutal torture he endured in the previous book, Casino Royale. Additionally, by this point MI6 has managed to heal most of Bond’s hand which was painfully branded with a Russian spy insignia in Casino Royale. Now in Live and Let Die, Bond assumes the identity of an undercover American –he is a New Englander from Boston on holiday and he sports a military haircut (he is also put through a brief “Americanization” course which advises him to change many of his high-brow British mannerisms and vocabulary into a less flattering, more hokey demeanor to match Fleming’s own views of Americans). Fleming’s low opinion of Americans routinely surfaces throughout the Bond books.
CIA agent Felix Leiter also returns in this story. Together, he and Bond investigate Mr. Big’s clubs in Harlem where they meet an unusual girl named Solitaire, but while on the trail they are both quickly captured by Mr. Big’s henchmen. Bond and Leiter are then tortured but curiously released without further incident (this was a bit of a rather convenient plot-hole in my opinion –why would the villains bot simply kill their enemies?) Bond’s pinky finger is merely broken after Mr. Big’s supposedly oracular beau, Solitaire, claims Bond is telling the truth about his identity. She has been given her nickname after deciding to give up on men in her native Haiti and thus she lives as a “Solitaire.” Her real name is Simone Latrelle. She is described as one of the most beautiful women Bond has ever seen, and we learn that she is being kept as a voodoo prophet under the wing of Mr. Big, exploited for her supposed psychic abilities. However, she flashes playing cards at Bond to subtly indicate her own disloyalty to Mr. Big –can she be trusted? The introduction of Solitaire as a mystic seer in the eyes of Mr. Big is the first moment in the novel where we are presented with the eerie supernatural voodoo cult themes.
Bond kills several of Mr. Big’s henchmen and escapes his captors, but before skipping town, Solitaire connects with Bond under disguise and they use aliases to board a train together from New York to Florida (Ian Fleming once took this exact same train ride in 1943 while en route to Jamaica himself), however Mr. Big’s henchmen are secretly watching from afar. Suddenly, while in transit, there is an accident aboard the train but only after Bond and Solitaire have fled. Bond then meets up with Felix Leiter in St. Petersburg, Florida to investigate a large warehouse filled with Mr. Big’s tropical fish while Solitaire waits in the hotel, but Bond and Leiter are soon spotted and they are turned away by a suspicious security guard. When they return to the hotel, Solitaire has been kidnapped and shortly thereafter Felix Leiter decides to return to the warehouse alone where he is also promptly captured, tortured, and dropped into a shark tank which costs him both an arm and a leg –a brutally painful near-demise for everyone’s favorite CIA agent. Bond is now left alone on the mission, following the trail of Mr. Big’s right hand man, who is known only as “The Robber” (Bond eventually kills him in a fight that ends with The Robber falling into a cage filled with sharks).
The near-death of Felix Leiter is a reminder of Fleming’s views –it’s no secret that a key subtext in Fleming’s James Bond novels is a not-so-subtle critique of Americans, and this theme holds true in Live and Let Die. Americans are portrayed as entirely incapable and mostly incompetent when it comes to handling a heartless criminal who is smuggling pirate gold right under their noses. Indeed Ian Fleming originally intended to kill off Bond’s friendly ally, Felix Leiter, at this point in the saga, but thankfully he was persuaded against doing so by his publisher. Thus, Bond’s Texan CIA compatriot lived to return again (albeit barely) in the fourth Bond novel Diamonds Are Forever.
At any rate, Bond flies from Tampa to Jamaica and we are given the backstory of Henry Morgan’s hidden treasure which was apparently rumored to have been buried on the Isle of Surprise. According to rumor, a young fisherman mysteriously disappeared one day and a New York syndicate (later revealed to be wholly owned by Mr. Big) suddenly purchased the remote island for a thousand pounds. Then strange activities like violent shark and barracuda attacks began to plague the island, meanwhile there were no less than twenty visits to the region by a yacht called the Secatur (owned by Mr. Big), and many people on the mainland began to hear strange noises of drums beating and loud voodoo chants which lasted long into the night. It all leaves an eerie and ominous tone to the book.
Meanwhile, Bond’s Secret Service liaison in Jamaica, Strangways, connects Bond to his factotum, a local man named Quarrel who is described as the “best swimmer and fisherman in the Caribbean” (I recalled seeing this character appear in the first James Bond film, Dr. No). He is a Cayman islander with a deep knowledge of the region and culture, and he helps Bond find a safe route to Mr. Big’s island. As the novel concludes, Bond makes a risky scuba dive through shark-infested waters to plant an explosive on Mr. Big’s yacht (Bond also spots a secret cave where the treasure is likely hidden), but after spotting the cave, Bond quickly stumbles into a silly tussle with an octopus and he is then spotted by Mr. Big’s men. Bond and Solitaire are captured and tied to a line which is dragged off the back of the yacht until an explosion suddenly kills most of Mr. Big’s men. The survivors then meet a remarkably grisly demise as sharks and barracuda feast on their flesh –we are given a particularly bloody account of Mr. Big’s horrifying demise as he is consumed by sharks. Bond and Solitaire are then rescued by Quarrel, and Bond recovers in a hospital.
“Never before in his life had there been so much to play for. The secret of the treasure, the defeat of a great criminal, the smashing of a Communist spy ring, and the destruction of a tentacle of SMERSH, the cruel machine that was his own private target” (177-178).
The fate of Bond and Solitaire’s romance is curiously never addressed in the book, and we apparently never hear from her again in the Bond novels, though Bond does reminisce about her when he returns to Jamaica in the sixth novel, Dr. No. In fact, both Live and Let Die and Dr. No share a great deal in common with one another.
In conclusion, Live and Let Die is a change of pace when contrasted with Bond’s debut in Casino Royale. From odd plot-threads involving zombies and voodoo cults, to deeply uncomfortable racial tropes and a slightly warmer, more romantic Bond, for whom the lingering ghost of Vesper Lynd apparently still remains very much present (“when the time comes I want to be alone with you, with all the time in the world”). Unfortunately, Live and Let Die is a sophomoric effort in my view. Strangely enough, I greatly enjoyed the moments of background exposition, especially the meticulously detailed classified information provided by the CIA and MI6 to their agents. As in Casino Royale, I appreciated the latent Cold War paranoia underlying much of the novel, such as in the case of Bond’s coded phone call to MI6 following Felix Leiter’s injuries late in the novel. These moments stood out to me as Cold War literature at its finest.
I was also drawn to the exotic locale of Jamaica in this novel, as well as its historical significance. There are lots of allusions to the age of exploration in Live and Let Die, from the likes of Christopher Columbus to Henry Morgan: “Here, because of the huge coastal swamps, nothing has happened since Columbus used Manatee Bay as a casual anchorage. Jamaican fishermen have taken the place of the Arawak Indians, but otherwise there is the impression that time has stood still” (172). It gives the novel an air of historical significance and a link to the great adventurers of yesteryear. Apparently, in the book James Bond knows Jamaica well –he visited the island once on an extended assignment after the war when the communists tried to infiltrate the Jamaican labor unions. I imagine Ian Fleming deeply enjoyed writing these Jamaican scenes while sitting near a window or on the sprawling veranda of his tropical Goldeneye estate in Jamaica.
Lastly, a final point of note, there are several differences between Ian Fleming’s original novel and the 1973 movie for Live and Let Die –whereas the book is driven by the MacGuffin of missing pirate gold, the movie concerns an underground heroin ring and drug-dealing in America. And the film includes other details not found in the book, such as an additional character called Dr. Kananga as a front for Mr. Big. I would submit that both the movie and the book, though considerably different, are both somewhat mediocre outings for Mr. Bond and thus not essential reading/viewing for the casual James Bond fan.
Fleming, Ian. Live and Let Die. Thomas & Mercer in Las Vegas, NV c/o Ian Fleming Publications Ltd. 1954 (republished in 2012). Paperback edition.
Film Review: Live and Let Die (1973)