High Time to Kill is Raymond Benson’s fourth addition – if you count a novelisation of Tomorrow Never Dies – to the James Bond series; and once again he manages to combine the sheer fantasy of the plot with a fairly decent story. British government scientists have developed a new material – Skin 17 – that should be able to withstand the heat and stresses to allow an aircraft to fly at Mach 7. Unfortunately a traitor within the development team working for the Union – a sort of terrorist-for-hire but only in it for the money; SPECTRE mark two if you like – has stolen all the formulae and procedures to make the new wonder material. Bond is assigned to track down those responsible for the treachery and recover the microdot before it falls into the hands of an unfriendly power. As the story unfolds it becomes apparent that Bond’s own department has a mole that is working for the Union so they know every move Bond makes even before he makes it. As a novel in its own right this is a pretty entertaining book; as a Bond novel it is getting towards some of Ian Fleming’s better efforts and is well worth a look.
After slogging through a mind-numbing 13-page golf game complete with brand names of every item Bond and his colleagues used in their round, I tried to forge ahead but gave up at page 47, in the midst of a meeting that promised to be as boring as most real meetings. The story concerns a cheap attempt at resurrecting SPECTRE, this time called the 'Union'. The setting is mostly mountainous, which could have been interesting (Benson probably read Into Thin Air and a lightbulb crackled somewhere) but once again, a decent idea is ruined with amateurish writing. Benson prides himself on writing a more 'Fleming' Bond, but sadly he doesn't realize his own absurdity. Fleming was very good at what he did, and his novels still hold up. Benson is not even in the same league. Fleming himself would gasp and die another death if he read one chapter of this novel.
What do You think about High Time To Kill (2000)?
I was attracted by JB adventuring on Kangchenjunga, but the first half of the book was extremely tedious and full of awful things like a whole chapter about game of golf and Bond encountering a lady with a 'tongue like a live minnow'. The second half at least had some interesting mountainy bits (despite the extremely unlikely turns of events) but Bond still behaved like a bit of a douche most of the time.I also didn't need to know exactly the brand of literally everything he used. (Bond tightened his Grivel crampons and picked up his ice axe made by Black Diamond etc etc...) The sex was AWFUL too. Maybe it's supposed to be?
—Kat
