Review: Great Tribute to Fleming... Not So Great Thriller
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 10, 2014
In "Operation Parsifal," Damian Stevenson has crafted a wonderful tribute to Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond. Fans of Fleming and Bond will love the many insider references and cleverly concealed Easter eggs (I'm a fairly good Bond buff, but I'm sure I didn't spot all of them). Unfortunately, once you get past all the Bond references, what's left is a World War II spy thriller that's somewhat confusing to follow."Parsifal" is based on the premise that, during World War II, Ian Fleming was an agent for British intelligence who winds up getting sent on James Bond-style missions. This one is a doozy. It's January 1944, and the handwriting is on the wall for the Third Reich. A group of German industrialists want to assassinate Hitler and seize power. They're just as evil as Hitler, but more dangerous because they are far more rational and capable of planning an intelligent strategy against the Allies (and they've got General Rommel in their corner). Fleming's mission is to stop them, ironically, by keeping Hitler alive.There's plenty of action in Operation Parsifal, including fights on trains and airplanes. Fleming is fit and resourceful, plus he's got some neat gadgets given him by Q Branch. He's also got two girlfriends, one in England who's carrying his child, and the other the former girlfriend of the sadistic industrialist who's the head of the conspiracy.There's a lot to like in Operation Parsifal, but almost all of it stems from the in references to James Bond. We chuckle as Fleming has his own code sign (17F), and an adoring secretary like Miss Moneypenny. We grin when he introduces himself as "Fleming, Ian Fleming" and gives a bartender instructions on how to make his martini shaken (but, presumably, not stirred). And fans of the books will smile when they recognize a fight on a train reminiscent of From Russia with Love, and Bond, er Fleming, electrocuting a villain in a bathtub in a scene straight out of Goldfinger.Once you get past the Bond references however, what's left is a fairly run-of-the-mill treatment of an outlandish plot worthy of a Bond novel. A couple of the action sequences are well staged, especially the initial car chase through London. However, the actual story threads that hold the plot together are never fully developed. Stevenson spends far more time discussing what happened to the Channel Islands during the war (the only English territory seized and held by the Germans during the war) than what Fleming does once he arrives at the villain's headquarters on the Islands. It actually requires far less derring do than one might think for Fleming to gum up the anti-Hitler plot, so, to fill out the remaining pages of the novel, Fleming travels to Africa to try to find the arch villain has gone into hiding, a subplot straight out of Heart of Darkness. Those final scenes seem completely thrown together at random and hard to follow.If this novel was about Ian Smith instead of Ian Fleming, I doubt it would have received nearly the number of highly favorable reviews that it has. Stevenson has attempted to copy Fleming's style, but the natural charm isn't there, nor are the memorable characters that inhabited the Bond novels. The villains are suitably nasty and the women suitably sexy (one of them is the actual woman the real Fleming eventually married), but readers will have a hard time remembering even their names the next day, let along much else about them.In fact, there is only one memorable character in Operation Parsifal and his name is James Bond. His presence inhabits every page of the book and spotting the references and tributes to Bond are a lot of fun. The obvious inference to be drawn here is that Fleming's exploits battling the Nazis proved the inspiration for James Bond (that's actually the case, but the real Fleming's intelligence exploits, while worthy of a book of their own, didn't put him repeatedly into hand-to-hand combat with the Nazis as happens to his fictional counterpart). For Bond fans (including myself), the oft-times clever Bond references and tributes make this book enjoyable enough to overlook its story telling deficiencies. For non-Bond fans who are expecting a thriller that works on its own, the book may well be a letdown.