Book review : Shaken Not Stirred By Aaron Cooley

I first heard about Aaron Cooley's shaken not stirred whilst he was being interviewed on the excellent James Bond Radio podcast. Aaron is also kind enough to follow me on twitter and I promised that I would write a review of Shaken Not Stirred as soon as I found some time.

I’ve never been much of a fan of historical fiction but the idea of a fictionalised version of Ian Fleming's WW2 exploits and the story of how that would lead him to create James Bond was an intriguing one.

Before i get into the review properly i should explain that this book took me quite a while to finish, not because it was bad or anything but because I was stressed out with college work and was reading other stuff. I should probably explain that I’m writing this review about a month after I finally finished the book (for the reason I’ve just outlined) which means I’m writing from memory (which is pants) so  some details may have escaped me .

Synopsis: Haven’t you ever wondered what inspired the creation of fiction’s greatest secret agent? Author Aaron Cooley takes the reader on a World War II thrill ride across two continents and six nations in pursuit of the answer to this question. A first-time British spy is on the trail of the Allies’ most important Double Agent, on a mission to determine his loyalty before he can hand over the means of creating history’s most devastating weapon to the Nazis. Before his mission is over, this young Briton will be inspired to create a fictional super-agent who will one day become one of literature’s most famous characters. An engaging, fantastical what-could-have-been, SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED is not to be missed by World War II buffs, literary devotees, and especially, fans of Her Majesty’s most famous spy.

 Shaken, Not Stirred is a fictionalized account of Ian Fleming’s wartime work, but it’s easy to imagine it really happening.

In Shaken, Not Stirred, a young Ioan is working for   Naval Intelligence and he’s sent to the Congo to find and report back to MI6 about   the whereabouts of double agent Dusan Petrović. His inexperience is apparent and he stands out like a sore thumb. While Petrović could have easily looked the other way, he takes Ioan under his wing, nick names him Phlegm and teaches him how to be a spy.

At first Ioan isn’t sure what to make of Petrović (neither was I) Does Petrović have a master plan or does he feel sorry for Ioan? Perhaps this is the nature of a double agent. Together Ioan and Petrović navigate the perils of being agents and Ioan gets a little more than he anticipated. Throughout the novel, we get glimpses of what would eventually inspire Ioan to create James Bond.

Ioan gets a code name and is introduced to gadgets Bond would be happy to use. We’re also introduced to would be Bond Girl, Christine who has a preference for martinis. It’s through Christine, Ioan quickly learns how women play a role in espionage. Petrović tells him,  "If you take one lesson from me, Phlegm, never forget the number one rule of espionage: Women are a business expense. You allow yourself to expect anything more out of them, you lower your defences. To a knife in the back." It’s at this exact moment, a reader can understand Fleming and why women are the “business expense,” in a Bond novel.

I must confess that i don't read much historical fiction (nothing against it , it just isn't my thing) and that I weren't a  mahoosive bond fan i might not have picked this up BUT. I really enjoyed Shaken, Not Stirred. It’s thoroughly researched and well written. It’s a different take on the life of Ian Fleming.

 Cooley  mixes Fiction  with reality and as I've said, he does a superb job with the research. Several events included are based on true events such as the Heisenberg and Dibner rivalry and it goes hand in hand with Hitler’s pursuit of the bomb. Petrović and several other characters bring up the ‘what if’ Hitler gets the bomb, which is a question a lot of people asked themselves at the time. Cooley kept me on the edge of my seat and afterwards all I could think of was, “thank god Hitler didn’t get there first.”  It’s something you’ll be thinking as you read.

Readers will easily recognize aspects of the Bond novels and films. In fact, if you’ve read Casino Royale or seen the film version, the scene where Bond watches Le Chiffre at the card table is familiar in Shaken, Not Stirred. This time it’s with Ioan and Petrović and a set of cards with Skorzeny and a game of Baccarat. Prior to Ioan joining Petrović and Skorzeny, Petrović sends him a suit and Ioan asks why. Petrović says it’s to seduce Christine and here we can see the birth of the immaculate Bond in his tux. It works well enough for Ioan since Christine waits for him in his room and says, ‘Why Ioan. I thought spies were meant to be suave. Debonair.’ Ioan replies ‘I was ill that day at spy school.’ That is a line that wouldn't be out of place in a Bond film.

 After I finished reading shaken not stirred I went back to that James Bond Radio podcast and I found out something that astonished me ,  shaken not stirred is Aaron's first novel but it's so well written you'd never guess it .  Shaken, Not Stirred is without a doubt a must read for any James Bond fan.    Cooley has done the near-impossible: crafted a spy thriller that   Ian Fleming himself would have been proud to call his own. It’s one of The best books I've read this year , in fact it’s almost as good as this year’s official Bond book : Trigger Mortis. 

Book Review : Cold Is The Grave By Peter Robinson.

Jack Reacher, November Man, Bond and Bourne are all thriller series I’d thoroughly recommend and after reading Cold Is the Grave by Peter Robinson I would add the Inspector Banks novels to that list. 

Cold Is the Grave is the eleventh outing for Inspector Banks.  

Description from the back cover:

Detective Inspector Banks’s relationship with Chief Constable Riddle has always been strained. So Banks is more than a little surprised when Riddle summons him late one night and begs for his help.

For Riddle, Banks’s new case is terrifyingly close to home. Six months ago his sixteen-year old daughter ran away to London, where she has fallen into a turbulent world of drugs and pornography. With his reputation threatened, Riddle wants Banks to use his unorthodox methods to find her without fuss. But before he knows it, Banks is investigating murder …

Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks had never had a good relationship with Chief Constable 'Jimmy' Riddle, so he was more than surprised when the Chief Constable summoned him late one night and begged for his help. Six months previously Riddle's daughter, sixteen year old Emily, ran away to London and became involved with drugs and pornography. Riddle wants Banks to go to London and find his daughter – and try to persuade her to return home. He also wants Banks to go as a private individual rather than as a policeman. Banks agrees to go; he knows how he would have felt if the same thing had happened to his daughter Tracy.

 Emily Riddle, sixteen going on thirty, ran away from home after leaving her parents in disarray. She made demands of them and then when they gave her what she wanted she loathed them all the more for it. Banks finds her living with a thug named Barry Clough, but he has had other names. Clough is a gangster with a rock star image of himself and a penchant for underage girls. After posing as her father Banks extracts the girl, dodges a potentially career ending temptation to sleep with her, and returns the girl to her parents. 

One month later she is found dead in a nightclub toilet , murdered by a mixture of cocaine and strychnine. Banks finds it difficult to stand back and be objective. It becomes personal to him and Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe has to warn Banks,

‘Don’t let anger and a desire for revenge cloud your judgement? Look clearly at the evidence, the facts before you make any moves. Don’t go off half-cocked the way you’ve done in the past’. (page 192)

He and his team, including Detective Sergeant Annie Cabot, are also investigating the death of Charlie Courage, a small-time crook. Their investigations take them from their base in Eastvale, Yorkshire down to London, Stony Stratford, and Leicestershire, with links to crime in Northumbria. At first this seems to be unrelated to Emily’s death but Banks begins to suspect that the two cases may be linked.

More complications follow with blackmail, another death and suicide, but eventually Banks and Annie work their way through the maze of events. Banks, though, has more victims of crime to add to those that bother his sleep with feelings of guilt, thinking that he should have dug deeper, and that he could have prevented the murders. He knew there was ‘something desperately out of kilter with the Riddle family’, and realises that Emily’s death was ‘murder from a distance, perhaps even death by proxy, which made it all the more bloody to solve.’ (page 271)

Weaving together threads of plot from characters pasts, presents and futures, Robinson builds a case that involves more than just one crime and more than just one character. This was a great 'who-dunnit' from beginning to end, with   plot twist’s that always ensure your best guesses will be wrong.

This is the 11th book in the Inspector Banks series and refers back to incidents in previous books. It’s not too difficult to follow if you haven’t read all the others (as I haven’t) but I think it would help and I wish that I had. It’s also a bit too long for my liking .However, this is still a good read and I’ve already moved on to my next Inspector Banks novel ‘A strange Affair’