Book Review: For Your Eyes Only (1960) by Ian Fleming

By 1959-1960, Ian Fleming had grown weary of continuing his popular James Bond saga. After cranking out an annual 70,000-word novel each year for several years in a row, Fleming had intended for Goldfinger to be the final Bond novel. At the time, CBS was in talks to produce a James Bond television program for American audiences, and Fleming had begun drafting scripts for the show. But when the concept ultimately fell apart, Fleming simply re-worked his unused script treatments into short stories, published in various magazines before they were collected into an anthology entitled For Your Eyes Only. Published on April 11, 1960, the title of this short story anthology was originally “The Rough with the Smooth,” which was also the original title of the first story featured in the collection “From a View to a Kill.” This collection is unique in the Bond oeuvre in that it contains two experimental short stories, both of which stand out in stark contrast to the rollicking espionage adventures detailed in the longer form novels.

“From a View to a Kill”

“…at all closely guarded headquarters there’s bound to be an invisible man –a man everyone takes so much for granted that he just isn’t noticed –gardener, window cleaner, or postman.”

Originally published as a serial in the Daily Express in 1959 under the title “Murder Before Breakfast” (Fleming called it “The Rough with the Smooth”), in “From a View to a Kill” Ian Fleming offers a fun, straightforward short spy thriller. It begins with a brief prelude teaser. During a high-speed motorcycle chase shootout in St. Germain Paris, a mysterious assassin guns down a British diplomat named Bates who is carrying secret dispatches on behalf of “SHAPE” (or Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe), a cohort of eight NATO nations. Bates typically makes this journey across the city every morning at 7:00am, however on this particular morning, he is killed and robbed –the assassin steals his watch, wallet, and briefcase which contains important dispatches, intelligence summaries, briefings, and battle plans.

Meanwhile, James Bond is drinking at a café called Fourquet’s in Paris after “a dismally failed assignment on the Austro-Hungarian border” (6) in which he was sent to Station V to retrieve a Hungarian agent, but the man was accidentally killed in action. Bond is now set to return to London where he will be asked to file a report about the failed mission. Over his drink, Bond reminisces about his first experience in Paris at the age of 16 when he lost virginity as well as his notecase. Once again, Fleming’s Bond bemoans the cultural state of the world –in this case, he has not experienced a happy day in Paris since 1945.  

“It was not that the town had sold its body. Many towns have done that. It was its heart that was gone –pawned to the tourists, pawned to the Russians and Roumanians and Bulgars, pawned to the scum of the world who had gradually taken thee town over. And, of course, pawned to the Germans. You could see it in the people’s eyes –sullen, envious, ashamed” (7).

At any rate, a lonely Bond is fantasizing about a romantic tryst with an imagined French woman when, lo and behold, a beautiful woman named Mary Ann Russell steps out of a nearby car and takes a seat at his table. She utters the top-secret phrase, “crash dive” – a Secret Service phrase borrowed from the Submarine Service meaning “bad news, the worst.” Who is she? Apparently, Mary Ann Russell is a Grade Two assistant, Number 765 on the job at Station F for six months, and wouldn’t you know it? She is equally as bored of France as Bond. Naturally, an infatuation between the two ensues.

After being taken away by Mary Ann Russell, Bond then meets with the portly head of Station F, the wing commander named Rattray, before Bond meets with Colonel Schreiber, headquarter commander of security branch at “SHAPE” where Bond is briefed on the killing of Bates. Who shot Bates the dispatcher? And why? Was it one of the Italian, German, or French employees? Bond is sent on an undercover stake-out in camouflage amidst the dense flora near where a gipsy caravan is located, which Bond suspects of having been involved in the shooting. Worried about Bond, Mary Ann Russell laments, “You’re a lot of children playing at Red Indians” (a recurring phrase in the Bond novels, beginning with Casino Royale). In this section of the story, Fleming reminds us of his personal love of bird-watching as Bond takes note of various bird calls. Then a secret underground base is revealed (with a rose-covered periscope) and the underground passage is opened with a coded bird whistle. Now, with the enemy lair revealed, Bond slinks away and drives along the regular dispatcher route the following morning while undercover as the new delivery man. This allows him to surprise the attackers and infiltrate their underground bunker (apparently these enemies are Russian operatives), but in the chaotic tussle, Bond is only narrowly rescued by Mary Ann Russell. In the end, they depart together:         

“Come over here. I want to show you a bird’s nest.”
“Is that an order?”
“Yes.”

Film Review: A View To A Kill (1985).

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“For Your Eyes Only”

“The most beautiful bird in Jamaica, and some say the most beautiful bird in the world, is the streamer-tail or doctor humming-bird” (opening line).

Drawing upon similar inspirations as featured in Fleming’s earlier novel Diamonds Are Forever, “For Your Eyes Only” uses settings borrowed from Fleming’s many visits to his friend Ivar Bryce’s Black Hollow Farm in Vermont. Initial working titles for this tale included “Rough Justice” (as well as “Death Leaves an Echo” and “Man’s Work”). It was published in Weekend magazine in 1960 and the title was later changed to “For Your Eyes Only.” This story offers a unique personal vengeance mission for James Bond –an off-the-grid vendetta on behalf of M. Notably, it conveys Fleming’s trademark contempt for de-colonization efforts, reminding us that he saw himself as a defender of the Victorian realm, a British imperialist of sorts.

As in “From a View to a Kill,” this story features a brief but compelling opening teaser. The Havelocks are middle-aged birders who reside on their twenty-thousand-acre Jamaican plantation called Content, nestled in the foothills. It was originally given to the Havelock family by Oliver Cromwell as a reward for being signatories to King Charles’s death warrant (perhaps a nod to Honey Ryder’s family in Dr. No). A banana and cattle ranch, Content is regarded as one of the richest and best run private estates on the island. However, the Havelocks privately bemoan the influx of money flooding into Jamaica as a result of the Castro Revolution in Cuba. “Rackets, union funds, government money –God knows. The place is riddled with crooks and gangsters” (34). Notably, Fleming’s casual racism rears its ugly head again as the Havelocks have a “huge black Negress” servant named Agatha who is shadowed by a young “quadroon” named Fayprince.

Suddenly, three mysterious men arrive at Content –including Major Gonzales from Havana— carrying bags of money representing an unknown “fine gentleman” in Cuba. The three men claim they are buying Content from the Havelocks, but when the “offer” is rejected because the Havelocks “do not share the popular thirst for American dollars,” the three men kill Colonel and Mrs. Havelock. They flee in a boat just as the Havelock daughter, Judy, arrives at her family home in horror.

Meanwhile, back in London Bond is casually chatting with M while overlooking the mowed grass in Regent’s Park (here we learn that M had once given up the position of Fifth Sea Lord in the Royal Navy to become head of the Secret Service). M asks Bond if he is familiar with the Havelock case, and shares that he was a close personal friend of the Havelocks (in fact, he was best man at their wedding in Malta in 1925). Apparently, their murder was actually committed at the hands of a German man named von Hammerstein:

“There are a lot of Germans well dug in in these banana republics. They’re Nazis who got out of the net at the end of the War” (44)

Von Hammerstein is ex-Gestapo, the Head of Batista’s counter intelligence operations in Cuba where he made a lot of money by means of extortion, blackmail, and protection. But now, in the wake of the Castro Revolution, his man Gonzales has been forcibly seeking new places to park his money throughout the region. Presently, Von Hammerstein and his henchmen have fled to northern Vermont where they are hiding at a place called Echo Lake, a millionaire’s rental ranch tucked away in the mountains.

In tracking down von Hammerstein, M has been in touch with Edgar Hoover of the FBI, but Hoover currently has his hands full with gun-running from Miami to the Castro regime, as well as gangster money flowing through American casinos linked to Havana. Once again, the FBI has proven to be a less than helpful ally in a Bond novel, but the Canadian Mounties agree to assist in the mission to assassinate von Hammerstein. When M asks if Bond can fulfill this personal mission, he responds:

“I wouldn’t hesitate for a minute, sir. If foreign gangsters find they can get away with this kind of thing they’ll decide the English are as soft as some other people think we are. This is a case for rough justice – an eye for an eye” (47).

Thus, Bond is dispatched to exact the “law of the jungle” upon von Hammerstein and his cohorts. He is handed a docket from M stamped “For Your Eyes Only.” Bond then flies off to Montreal –along the way he bemoans newfangled airplanes—and upon arrival, he meets Colonel “Johns” who preps Bond for a sniping mission outside the Echo Lake compound (it reminds Johns of his time in WWI, but now he is content to simply push papers and wait out his pension).

Along the way, Bond encounters a Canadian simpleton who inquires if he is a hunter (it is a bit of an amusing caricature which reveals more of Fleming’s view of Americans and Canadians –“You can get far in North America with laconic grunts”). At any rate, Bond travels on foot through the tree-studded hills surrounding Echo Lake. As he approaches a reasonable shooting distance, suddenly he hears a twig snap and Bond is confronted by a beautiful blond woman brandishing a bow and arrow –“move an inch and I’ll kill you”—she turns out to be Judy Havelock. As they get to know one another, Judy explains how von Hammerstein’s men murdered her personal dog and pony at Content back in Jamaica, along with her parents. Surprising no one, Bond and Judy steadily grow closer.  

“She looked like a beautiful, dangerous customer who knew wild country and forests and was not afraid of them” (62).

While waiting for the right moment to strike, Bond delivers lots of pondering diatribes on the nature of murder. Is he a mere public executioner? Is it right to exact vengeance to fulfill someone else’s personal vendetta? When the large, lurching, perverted von Hammerstein takes a dive into Echo Lake, Judy shoots him dead with an arrow from a hundred yards away, while Bond fires upon the rest of the goons. An extensive shootout sequence ensues in which Bond kills all the remaining guards, while Judy is wounded in the crossfire. Bond then tends to her with a kiss and he fashions a tourniquet on her arm before pledging to bring her back to London to meet M.    

With this short story sharing some similarities with the Eon film of the same name, “For Your Eyes Only” is a memorable adventure for Bond, very much in the same vein as “From a View to a Kill.” Notably, it presents a unique moral dilemma for Bond to wrestle with while staking outside Echo Lake. It contains all of Bond’s contempt for all things new, while he wistfully reminisces about how grand things were in the past –it also continues Fleming’s unsubtle derision of American culture– but I still thought this was a thrilling installment in the Fleming-verse.   

Film Review: For Your Eyes Only (1981).

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“Quantum of Solace”

“I’ve always thought that if I ever married I would marry an air hostess…”

Intended to be an homage to W. Somerset Maugham, whose literary works were praised by Fleming, “Quantum of Solace” is a tale that was fed to Fleming by his neighbor and mistress, Blanche Blackwell. It features a subtextual commentary on the failing state of Fleming’s own marriage at the time. I have to say, this is the strangest Bond story I have yet encountered –it is essentially one long anecdote, a story within a story. Bond is in Nassau for a week where he is working to negotiate a stop to the flow of arms headed to the Castro regime from nearby territories (Bond is set to depart for Miami the next day). Following a dinner with several prominent people, including a Canadian millionaire couple, Bond and the Governor of Nassau are left alone:

“Bond didn’t like Nassau. Everyone was too rich. The winter visitors and the residents who had houses on the island talked of nothing but their money, their diseases and their servant problems. They didn’t even gossip well. There was nothing to gossip about. The winter crowd were all too old to have love affairs and, like most rich people, too cautious to say anything malicious about their neighbours” (77-78).

To break the silence with the Governor, Bond makes an offhand comment that he would have liked to marry an air hostess, because it would have been nice to wed a pretty girl who can essentially serve him… This leads the Governor to echo a story about a mysterious man he once knew who married an air hostess (all while Bond privately fusses about the situation and the “damnably cloying sofa” on which he is seated).

The Governor then offers a profile of Philip Masters who served in the Colonial Service in Nigeria, a shy man who nevertheless fraternized with the natives –“part of our inheritance from our Victorian grandfathers.” Bond interrupts the story with a predictably bigoted remark: “The only trouble with beautiful Negresses is that they don’t know anything about birth control” (83). At any rate this sensitive misfit, Philip Masters, was then moved by the Labour Government to Bermuda. While on the flight, he fell for a saucy flight attendant named Rhoda Llewellyn and they were quickly married. However, she married Philip for what she believed was his adventurous lifestyle working in the Colonial Service. As time passed, Rhoda engaged in an affair with a fellow golfer (Tattersall) while Philip took care of their home, but when Philip found out, they remained married but refused to speak to one another. Eventually, Philip left Rhoda saddled with considerable debt. She finally faced her comeuppance before being rescued by a Canadian millionaire whom she wed. The following is the moral of the story according to the Governor:

“You’re not married, but I think it’s the same with all relationships between a man and a woman. They can survive anything so long as some kind of basic humanity exists between the two people. When all kindness has gone, when one person obviously and sincerely doesn’t care if the other is alive or dead, then it’s just no good. That particular insult to the ego – worse, to the instinct of self-preservation – can never be forgiven. I’ve noticed this in hundreds of marriages. I’ve seen flagrant infidelities patched up, I’ve seen crimes and even murder forgiven by the other party, let alone bankruptcy and every other form of social crime. Incurable disease, blindness, disaster – all these can be overcome. But never the death of common humanity in one of the partners. I’ve thought about this and I’ve invented a rather high-sounding title for this basic factor in human relations. I have called it the Law of the Quantum of Solace” (93).   

Once again, “Quantum of Solace” (first published as “A Choice of Love and Hate” in 1959 in Modern Woman magazine) contains nothing in common with the film of the same name (thankfully). In my view, this is the worst Bond story I have yet come across. It is, in many respects, an odd defense of stereotypes and it seems stylistically out of place. The story ends with an air of mystery –Is Philip Masters intended to represent the Governor? Is Rhoda intended to be the Canadian millionaire’s wife from the beginning of the story (who has so drearily bored Bond with her conversation)? The best part of the story is the oddly compelling title: “Quantum of Solace” –a reference to the measurement that the Governor uses to determine a sufficiently balanced romantic relationship.  

Film Review: Quantum of Solace (2008).

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“Risico”

“In this pizniss is much risico.”

For “Risico,” Ian Fleming drew inspiration from a vacation he took to Venice with his wife (as well as from Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice) in order to craft this tale of drug-smuggling in Italy. “Risico” offers a classic Bond adventure –albeit one with a twist in the end.  

Sitting in Rome, Bond reflects on a past meeting with M in which he was sent to Rome on a narcotics mission (he hopes the drugs don’t grip European teenagers the way they have Americans) –“this duty was espionage, and when necessary sabotage and subversion” (105). Here, we learn about how fussy of a character M truly is –he does not employ men with beards, nor people who are completely bilingual, nor people who use their familial connections, nor people who are too “dressy,” nor people who call him “sir” while off-duty, nor people with exaggerated faith in Scotsmen.. and apparently M is known around MI6 for regularly having bees up his bonnet.  

At any rate, Bond has been sent to meet with an informant named Kristatos, an agent for an anti-narcotics unit run by the U.S. Treasury Department (which M regards as a “pretty crazy arrangement”). The unit works closely with the CIA. Indeed, Allen Dulles himself fed the name Kristatos to M. Apparently, Kristatos is a quiet double agent who entertains a bit of smuggling on the side. Bond goes undercover as a buyer. Bond’s MI5 colleague, Ronnie Vallance, previously hunted down the drugs to Italy before the trail ran dry (Ronnie Vallance appeared in the novel Diamonds Are Forever wherein he gave Bond his undercover alias of “Peter Franks”). In addition to Diamonds Are Forever, “Risico” is also linked to Goldfinger as M refers to Bond’s past narcotics mission in Mexico (which was mentioned at the beginning of Goldfinger).    

Kristatos solicits Bond to assassinate the head of this narcotics machine, a former Italian-American gangster known as “The Dove,” Enrico Colombo. Bond poses as a writer and enjoys a romantic liaison with Colombo’s girlfriend, Lisl Baum (named after an Austrian ex-girlfriend of Fleming’s from the 1930s) after she has a feud with Colombo, ending with wine splashed in his face. Bond and Lisl agree to meet at a peninsular beach enclave, Bagni Alberoni (near Venice), where Lisl agrees to share her knowledge of the drug-smuggling trade to help with Bond’s “novel” he is writing.

“…Venice is the one town in the world that can swallow up a hundred thousand tourists as easily as it can a thousand –hiding them down side-streets using them for crowd scenes on the piazzas, stuffing them into the vaporetti” (120).

On the beach, Bond is chased by a trio of henchmen until bond is captured and knocked out and awakens on a boat The Colombina floating out on the Adriatic with a crew of twelve.

“It struck Bond that Colombo had made a good life for himself – a life of adventure and thrill and risk. It was a criminal life – a running fight with the currency laws, the State tobacco monopoly, the Customs, the police – but there was a whiff of adolescent rascality in the air which somehow changed the colour of the crime from black to white – or at least to grey” (134).

As it turns out, Kristatos is actually the head honcho of the drug ring! He funnels narcotics on behalf of the Russians, smuggling them to western Europe in rolls of newsprint after the product is grown in Albania and the Caucasus. The next morning, the boat arrives at a fishing port at Ancona is suddenly attacked by a gang of Albanians. Bond saves Colombo’s men but shoots Kristatos as he tries to flee in a car while Colombo’s men burn down the opium warehouse and sink the Albanian gang’s boat. The story ends with Colombo offering Bond the heart of Lisl as companionship for the next few days while the mission is finished up.

Major elements of this story were later worked into the film For Your Eyes Only (1981). Fleming notably based the character of Colombo on real-life mobster “Lucky” Luciano, who assisted the FBI in protecting ships during World War II. “Risico” (originally spelled “Risiko”) was originally published in The Daily Express on April 11-15, simultaneous with the publication of the For Your Eyes Only anthology.

Film Review: For Your Eyes Only (1981).

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“The Hildebrand Rarity”

“Nowadays, said Mr. Krest, there were only 3 powers – America, Russia and China. That was the big poker game, and no other country had the chips or the cards to come to it.”

In 1958, Ian Fleming was sent to the Seychelles to report on a hunt for pirate treasure (the lost gold of French pirate Olivier “The Buzzard” Levasseur). While no treasure was ever found, Fleming was still inspired to write a James Bond story based on his experience. The result was an experimental whodunnit-styled Bond mystery (it was also based on a troubling experience Fleming encountered with Blanche Blackwell in which they both witnessed the poisoning of a fish). This story was not previously published before appearing in the For Your Eyes Only anthology.   

We find James Bond swimming around the Belle Anse lagoon in the Seychelles, readying to kill a stingray with a harpoon because it looks “extraordinarily evil.” He has just wrapped up a mission to determine the suitability of the Maldives for a mobile British naval base because there has been trouble with the new fleet as communists have been creeping in from Ceylon. After being here for about a month, Bond has now grown bored waiting to be sent back to Mombasa.

When he catches his prey, Bond is interrupted by a local friend, Fidele Barbey, the youngest member of a prominent, well-connected family in the Seychelles. Barbey announces they are being called away to join an American tycoon on his yacht as it heads for the island of Chagrin. The tycoon is named Milton Krest who owns Krest Hotels and the Krest Foundation, as well as “the finest damned yacht in the Indian Ocean” known as the Wavekrest. Bond and Fidele join Mr. Krest and his wife, Elizabeth “Liz” Krest as they sail for the island of Chagrin, collecting marine specimens for the Krest Foundation, in particular they are searching for one rare fish that one only dwells off the island of Chagrin.

Apparently, Fleming derived the name “Milton Krest” from a Greek sea captain who once helped British soldiers avoid being caught by German boat patrols (the surname Krest was borrowed from a drink Fleming enjoyed while in the Seychelles). This man, Krest, is described as being a lurching, arrogant American with German ancestry –he has a voice like Humphrey Bogart. Bond thinks, “this man likes to be thought a Hemingway hero. I’m not going to like him.” As with most Americans in a Fleming story, Krest is portrayed as condescending, ignorant, and boorish. Krest claims the English are a silly bunch, good for little more than serving as the best valets and butlers with “civility and servitude.” He believes there are only three major world powers now –America, Russia, and China (not England since the Europeans have descended into frivolity and decadence). In response, Bond shares an old aphorism he once heard: “America has progressed from infancy to senility without having passed through a period of maturity.” 

In time we learn that Krest and his wife have been married for two years. Previously, she worked as a receptionist at one of his hotels. But now Krest is hideously abusive toward her –Krest owns a giant stingray tail which he uses as a “corrector” on his wife (these stingray tails are illegal in the Seychelles). “There was a violent cruelty, a pathological desire to wound, quite near the surface in the man” (170).If she steps out of line, Krest brutalizes his wife –this leads to some harrowing scenes in the book including a moment in which she accidentally reveals that her husband has been committing tax fraud by using his foundation to purchase lavish things, like his yacht, and now he is obligated to produce a scientific discovery for the Smithsonian or else risk losing his yacht. Thus, he is in search of the rare fish called a “Hildebrand Rarity,” a pink-colored fish with stripes, to present to the world.

After they easily locate the Hildebrand Rarity off the coast of Chagrin –as Bond is disgusted to witness the poisoning of the rare fish—Krest behaves in a predictably insulting and oafish manner while drinking copious amounts of alcohol. That night, Bond steps out onto the top of the yacht where he is privately joined by Liz. In a tender moment she grasps Bond’s hand, but her vile husband witnesses the scene and the evening is interrupted by screams from their room. Later, Bond shockingly discovers that Krest has been strangled to death in his hammock with the Hildebrand Rarity left protruding from his mouth. Hoping to avoid any unwanted inquiry, Bond works quickly to cover-up the scene and toss Krest’s corpse over the side into the ocean. He makes it appear as if Krest’s hammock snapped.

This leads to a mystery –who killed Krest? Was it Liz, who was the victim of his abuse? Or could it have been Fidele, who he condescendingly called “Fido”? The story ends on a note of ambiguity as Liz invites Bond to sail with her to Mombasa –but when asked about the Hildebrand Rarity, she starts sweating, claiming she will simply donate the fish to the British Museum instead of the Smithsonian. Is she sweating from the heat? Can Bond trust her? Fleming leaves it up to the reader to decide.

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In conclusion, I found For Your Eyes Only to be an entertaining collection of James Bond short stories. Some of these are straight-forward spy-adventure tales, whereas others are highly experimental departures for Fleming. While there are elements and echoes of some of these stories in the Eon James Bond movies, none were directly adapted into films (For Your Eyes Only comes closest in its cinematic adaptation).   

My ranking of these stories would be as follows:

• “For Your Eyes Only”
• “From a View to a Kill”
• “The Hildebrand Rarity”
• “Risico”
• “Quantum of Solace”

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Fleming, Ian. For Your Eyes Only. Thomas & Mercer in Las Vegas, NV c/o Ian Fleming Publications Ltd. 1960 (republished in 2012). Paperback edition.

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