So this is an odds and sods collection of leftover James Bond stories published after Ian Fleming died, and a few years into the movie series. It includes two stories that “became films” in the sense that their titles became titles of films. The story “The Living Daylights” forms part of the movie version, but “Octopussy” bears little resemblance to that movie.
“Octopussy” is a good short story in the same way that several of Agatha Christie novels are good. Rather than put James Bond front and center, he is a catalyst of the plot, but the focus is one another character. It’s a good way of using Bond’s familiarity without having to do much with him. In this story an old British officer is found living in Jamaica off of money he’s secured by selling stolen Nazi gold, for which he also murdered a Nazi officer in the war. He’s long retired and past his career, he’s a sea creature enthusiast and snorkeler/spear fisher, and he’s recently been visited by James Bond, who is investigating the murder of the Nazi official, who body recently was recovered as a glacier receded. The focus of the story is the British officer’s decision making in the final moments of his life.
The second story in this collection is about a Russian double agent working to inflate the auction price of a Faberge art piece.
And “The Living Daylights” is a short story about Bond being sent to assassinate an assassin in Berlin. As he’s there and waiting, he muses and falls for a woman who walks the street he’s patrolling.
This was an audiobook edition, all read by Tom Hiddleston, who does a very good job in general, and poor Tom Hiddleston is left reading the accent of a Chinese character written by an old British man in the 1960s, a task which no white man can don passably or without a cringe-worthy result.
(Photo: http://bazeerflumore.blogspot.com/2015/02/signet-octopussy-variant-arrives.html)
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