Review: The Ian Fleming Files - Operation Parsival
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 16, 2013
This book is written with one madly exciting, improbable and bloody escapade after the other.It reads exactly as a James Bond film plays out.  The cover looks modern and has the usual type of model type holding a gun and positioned on a red (bloody?) background. This does reflect the contents of this novel.I find it all too unbelievable but if one enjoys the James Bond films then this book is a perfect read.  The agent is portrayed as capable of amazing feats and seems to be too good and, at everything.  He fights, shoots, uses natty and deadly equipment to perfection.  HE ALWAYS WINS.  He is irresistible to women of all types and nationalities, if they are married it is irrelevant.He is extremely well educated, handsome to a "head-turning" degree, has money, a good background, dresses to perfection and seems to lack.nothing.He is too much and what men either imagine themselves to be, or would prefer to be. The star has to be taken away as a protest against the male ego, too much of the fantastic and yet more of the assumption, implied or wished for, that women are at the beck and call of men.If ever there was a book that clearly explains style over substance then this it it, that being insisted upon despite the 100% success rate of this agent.It is an exciting, surprising, shocking , gory occasionally but an gripping read if one is in.the mood.I think the most thought  provoking aspect is not what is written but the absolute  implication of how people are affected by war and what they will do in the name of it. My final thoughts are not of the book but rather wondering about the type of things that were done during this time.