Books of 2024: Week 28 - Moonraker

Cody re-reads the third Bond novel.

MOONRAKER by Ian Fleming

Some of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels received reasonably faithful film adaptations. Sure, the movies might have changed some details and expanded the action, but they still qualify as being “close enough” to the source material. A few of Fleming’s books received film adaptations that are very different from the source material – and while I can understand why the filmmakers wouldn’t want to stick too closely to some of those books, one that still has something to offer that hasn’t made it to the screen is Fleming’s third Bond novel, Moonraker. There have been a couple attempts to do an adaptation of this one (the movie that shares the book’s title, plus Die Another Day), but there’s a great sequence that still deserves to make it into a movie. The introduction of the villain, industrialist Hugo Drax.

The perfect time for an adaptation of the Drax intro would have been during the Daniel Craig era, since it began with a film – Casino Royale – that was based around Bond’s skill at playing card games. (Texas Hold ‘Em poker in the film; he played baccarat in the novel.) Those same card skills set the story of Moonraker in motion. Drax is a national hero; a British soldier who was wounded and disfigured in World War II, but managed to build a post-war fortune for himself, and is now pumping his money into the Moonraker project: the construction of a rocket that will protect England from any potential nuclear attacks by Cold War enemies. Drax is a member at a club called Blades, where he plays games of bridge... and it has been brought to the attention of fellow Blades member M, Bond’s superior in the Secret Service, that Drax is a cheat. So M brings Bond in to figure out how Drax is cheating and beat him. A job Bond pulls off while fueled by alcohol and Benzedrine. The card game between Bond and Drax takes up a good chunk of the book’s page count, and it’s fascinating to read, just like the card games in Casino Royale were surprisingly fascinating. It would be great to see this brought to life on the screen... and it would have been especially great to see it happen in a Craig era follow-up to Casino Royale.

Soon after the card game, a man working on the Moonraker project murders the head of security at the Moonraker compound before shooting himself, so M sends Bond in to serve as the new head of security and work alongside Special Branch agent Gala Brand, who’s undercover as Drax’s assistant, to make sure there’s nothing shady going on at the Moonraker compound. It’s worth nothing that the Gala Brand character, shockingly, has never made it to the screen. She was left out of the Moonraker movie and was almost included in Die Another Day – but the character was renamed Miranda Frost when it was decided to make her a traitor. Gala is a unique Bond girl in that, while she does kiss Bond a time or two, she never sleeps with him, and in the end parts ways with him because she’s engaged to another man.

That’s entirely Gala’s decision because, of course, an engagement wouldn’t deter Bond. Fleming actually gives a lot of information on Bond’s job and personal life in this book, revealing that his work primarily consists of sitting in an office from 10am to 6pm (although the hours are elastic). He has a secretary named Loelia Ponsonby and has to go through a lot of files and memos. There are three 00s in the Secret Service, but an assignment will only come their way maybe two or three times a year. For risking his life and carrying off assassinations, Bond earns £2000 a year. He’s thirty-seven at the time of this book’s events, so he’s only eight years away from the forced retirement age of forty-five. He spends his evenings playing cards, or with one of three lovers, who are all married women. On the weekends, he plays golf for high stakes. He takes no holidays, but gets a fortnight’s leave at the end of each assignment. He lives in a small but comfortable flat, has a housekeeper named May, and drives a supercharged 1930 Bentley.

Once sent to the Moonraker compound, Bond does some detective work, tries his best to seduce Gala, and digs up some dark secrets about Drax’s World War II service record.

Moonraker was based on an idea Fleming had for a Bond movie screenplay (this was still several years before Eon started making the Sean Connery Bond movies), making it even more baffling that the story has never received a more direct adaptation. Fleming novelized the script... and found that it didn’t reach proper novel length. That’s when he came up with the card game introduction for the Drax character and the dive into Bond's life, which turned out to be my favorite part of the book.

I love the Bond film franchise, but there are times when going back and reading the Fleming novels make me wish for a Bond TV series (which would be very possible now that Amazon has merged with MGM, the studio where Bond is set up) that would be set in the 1950s and be made up of by-the-book adaptations of Fleming’s work. I think that would be a lot of fun to watch. And the book that makes me long for such a TV show the most is Moonraker. I would love to see this story play out on the screen exactly as is.