Doubleshot

Doubleshot  by Raymond Benson

I really loved the first three Raymond Benson authored James Bond books.  I guess, as the law of averages go, it was only a matter of time before I would consume one that would be a bit less than spectacular.  Alas, this was the case for Benson’s fourth Bond book.

Benson was always a major fan of the Bond books, and really only seemed to like the films if they were identical to the books.  So you can imagine his distaste for the movies once Roger Moore took over as the super spy, and also when John Gardner took over as the authorized author.  When Benson took over in the late 1990s, one of his main intentions was to bring the “old” Bond “back”.  I suppose that’s a good thing, and as mentioned, his first three books were very strong.

As far as the “old” Bond, it should be mentioned that Benson has created a major crime syndicate for many of his books called “The Union”.  Let’s just say that “The Union” very closely resembles Ian Fleming’s SPECTRE – right down to their clandestine meeting locations amongst the leaders in the middle of nowhere, to their mysterious intimidating “leader”  (he’s blind, but he seems to be able to “see” everything – especially when his lieutenants are trying to cheat the organization).  Benson introduced us to “The Union” in his previous Bond work “High Time to Kill”.  In that book, Bond obviously thwarted the baddies, so in this book, "The Union" is out for revenge.

Another feature of the “old” Bond, especially the literary Bond, is that he was more human.  He wasn’t quite as untouchable as the guy we see on the screen.  This has some advantages as well in some cases, but not so much in this book.  It seems as though Bond was pretty beat up at the end of his last adventure, so this book has the poor guy limping around between the pages looking worn, with black circles under his eyes, seeing hallucinations, taking handfuls of pills to help splitting headaches, and nearly passing out all of the time.   This isn’t how I like to picture 007 throughout an entire adventure.

Then, I found the plot to be rather stupid.  It seems as though “The Union” has managed to find (or construct) a replica (hence the title) of James Bond.  I don’t really like books that expect me to believe that a virtual clone can somehow be created of another human being.  So, anyway, another Bond is created that happens to look, act, and talk just like the original, and he’s doing some really “bad” things.  This, you see, is so the powers that be (such as M and her staff) become so confused and think that Bond has finally “turned”.  So they try to stop him, hence hindering the man’s plans.

Speaking of “doubles”, it seems as though Bond meets a lovely pair of sexified kittens in the book that are identical twins.  He meets the first one on a train somewhere and manages to score a date.  He then sees the twin, not realizing it’s a different person, and resumes talking about the future rendezvous.  Of course, being the clueless sister, she doesn’t know what he’s talking about, screams something like “Pervert!” and storms out.  No wonder the guy has persistent headaches.  Side note: If this happened in real life, wouldn’t the twin be able to figure out that the poor guy was actually talking to the sister?  I mean, I would assume a set of twins would get used to this sort of thing happening frequently.  Eventually, all works out well and the confusion is cleared up.  Still though, the entire time we spend with Bond and the twins reminds you of a bad Disney movie (except for the “sexified” part).

Without going into too much detail, the plot follows a pretty straight formula, and it doesn’t take much of a genius to figure out what’s going on, and stay one step ahead of the author, even though he thinks he’s fooling you.

Overall, this reminded me of a John Gardner Bond book, which really isn’t a compliment.  Gardner’s books usually fell somewhere in the “mediocre-o.k.” department, which is where this one belongs.  Benson’s first three Bond novels were much better, and I hope I’ll be able to say the same thing about the last two once I tackle them.