Dr. No (novel)

In March 1956 Fleming and his friend Ivar Bryce accompanied Robert Cushman Murphy (of the American Museum of Natural History) and Arthur Stannard Vernay (of the Flamingo Protection Society) on a trip to a flamingo colony on Great Inagua in the south of the Bahamas.[8][15] The colony was 100 square miles (260 km²) of dense mangrove swamp and salt flats, home to flamingos, egrets and roseate spoonbills;[8] the location inspired Crab Key.[16][17] Much of the travel overland on Great Inagua was by a swamp vehicle, a Land Rover fitted with over-large tyres that became the model for the "dragon" used in the story.[18]

Fleming's inspiration for the Doctor No character was Sax Rohmer's villain Dr Fu Manchu, who featured in books Fleming had read and enjoyed in earlier years.[2] Aspects of the plot were influenced by Rohmer's work, and Winder observes that the use of the centipede was "a straight steal" from a Fu Manchu novel;[19] other devices from Rohmer's novels included Doctor No's secret lair and the use of the mad scientist trope.[20]

After Diamonds Are Forever was published in 1956, Fleming received a letter from Geoffrey Boothroyd, a Bond enthusiast and gun expert, who criticised the author's choice of firearm for Bond.[21] Boothroyd suggested that Bond should swap his Beretta for a Walther PPK 7.65 mm, an exchange that made it to the novel.[22]

I wish to point out that a man in James Bond's position would never consider using a .25 Beretta. It's really a lady's gun—and not a very nice lady at that! Dare I suggest that Bond should be armed with a .38 or a nine millimetre—let's say a German Walther PPK? That's far more appropriate.[23]

Boothroyd also gave Fleming advice on the Berns-Martin triple draw shoulder holster and a number of the weapons used by SMERSH and other villains.[24] In thanks, Fleming gave the MI6 Armourer the name Major Boothroyd in Dr. No and M introduces him to Bond as "the greatest small-arms expert in the world".[22]

As he had done in his previous novels, Fleming borrowed names from his friends and associates to use in his book; Ivar Bryce's housekeeper, May Maxwell, became Bond's Scottish "treasure" May.[25] One of Fleming's neighbours in Jamaica, and later his lover, was Blanche Blackwell: Fleming named the guano-collecting ship in Dr. No as Blanche.[25][lower-alpha 2] His friend Patricia Wilder found that her nickname of Honey Chile was used for the novel's main female character, and John Fox-Strangways—a friend from the gentlemen's club White's—saw part of his surname being used for the name of the MI6 station chief in Jamaica.[27] Fleming also used the physical descriptions of people he knew; Quarrel, who previously appeared in the novel Live and Let Die, was based on a Jamaican fisherman who often took Fleming shark fishing.[2]

In Dr. No, for the first time in the Bond novels, there is friction between Bond and M, brought about because Bond was nearly killed by the SMERSH agent Rosa Klebb in From Russia, with Love.[29] M orders Bond to use a new gun and sends him on a holiday assignment, which Bond resents.[30] The writer Raymond Benson—who later wrote a series of Bond novels—sees M at his most authoritarian in Dr. No, punishing Bond in terms of both stripping him of his gun and then sending him on what both Bond and M considered at first to be a "soft" assignment.[31]

Honeychile Rider is one of three women in the Bond canon who have been scarred by rape.[lower-alpha 3] This follows a pattern where the women Bond comes across are somehow different to the norm,[32] although the cultural historian Jeremy Black points out that this gives Bond an opportunity to help and save both Rider and the others.[33] Other female characters in the Bond series have flaws, and Rider has a broken nose—the result of the rape she suffered.[34][lower-alpha 4] The cultural historians Janet Woollacott and Tony Bennett, in their analysis of the roles of women in the Bond novels, consider that Rider is "not archetypically feminine", but is "constructed according to the formula 'equal but yet subordinate'."[35] Rider is described in the book as having buttocks like a boy, which brought a response from Fleming's friend Noël Coward that "I was also slightly shocked by the lascivious announcement that Honeychile's bottom was like a boy's. I know that we are all becoming more broadminded nowadays, but really old chap what could you have been thinking of?"[36]

Black, reviewing all the villains in the series, wrote:

Fleming did not use class enemies for his villains, instead relying on physical distortion or ethnic identity ... Furthermore, in Britain foreign villains used foreign servants and employees ... This racism reflected not only a pronounced theme of interwar adventure writing, such as the novels of [John] Buchan, but also widespread literary culture.[37]

Dr. No is physically disfigured, like many of Bond's later adversaries;[38] No is 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 m) tall, with steel pincers for hands and has dextrocardia.[29][39] Bond describes him as "a giant venomous worm wrapped in grey tin-foil".[40] Benson considers that No is "a wickedly successful villain",[29] the best since Hugo Drax in Moonraker,[41] while Time thought No to be "one of the less forgettable characters in modern fiction".[42]

Quarrel was Fleming's idealised concept of a black person, and the character was based on his genuine liking for Jamaicans, whom he saw as "full of goodwill and cheerfulness and humour".[43] The relationship between Bond and Quarrel was based on a presumption of Bond's superiority.[44][45] Fleming described the relationship as "that of a Scots laird with his head stalker; authority was unspoken and there was no room for servility".[40] Winder considers the scenes with Quarrel to be "embarrassingly patronising but nonetheless hypnotic".[19]

Dr. No was released on 31 March 1958 in the UK as a hardcover edition by the publishers Jonathan Cape.[62] A paperback edition was issued by Pan Books in February 1960; over 115,000 copies were sold that year.[63] The first American edition was published in June 1958 by Macmillan under the name Doctor No.[64] The largest boost in sales of the novel came in 1962 with the release of the film adaptation. In the seven months after the picture's release, 1.5 million copies of the book were sold.[65] In 1964 the novel was serialised in France-Soir for the French market, which led to increased sales of Bond works in that country; 480,000 French-language copies of the six Bond novels were sold that year.[66] Since its initial publication the book has been issued in numerous hardback and paperback editions, translated into several languages and has never been out of print.[67]

In 2023 Ian Fleming Publications—the company that administers all Fleming's literary works—had the Bond series edited as part of a sensitivity review to remove or reword some racial or ethnic descriptors. The rerelease of the series was for the 70th anniversary of Casino Royale, the first Bond novel.[68]

For the first time in the Bond series, Fleming encountered harsh criticism.[69] The most virulent came from Paul Johnson of the New Statesman, who opened his review, "Sex, Snobbery and Sadism", with: "I have just finished what is, without doubt, the nastiest book I have ever read". He went on to say that "by the time I was a third of the way through, I had to suppress a strong impulse to throw the thing away".[1] Although he recognised that Bond represented "a social phenomenon of some importance", he saw this as a negative element, as the phenomenon concerned "three basic ingredients in Dr. No, all unhealthy, all thoroughly English: the sadism of a schoolboy bully, the mechanical, two-dimensional sex-longings of a frustrated adolescent, and the crude, snob-cravings of a suburban adult". Johnson saw no positives in Dr. No, saying that "Mr Fleming has no literary skill, the construction of the book is chaotic, and entire incidents and situations are inserted, and then forgotten, in a haphazard manner."[1]

Maurice Richardson, of The Observer, considered the novel "the usual sado-masochistic free-for-all, plus octopuses".[71] The unnamed critic in The Manchester Guardian referred to Johnson's "sex, snobbery and sadism" complaint. They highlighted the "sinister ... cult of luxury for its own sake", with Bond's enjoyment of branded and bespoke products, but disagreed with part of Johnson's summary that the novel was a sign of moral decay; rather, "we should be grateful to Mr. Fleming for providing a conveniently accessible safety-valve for the boiling sensibility of modern man."[72] This reviewer also conceded that while "the casualties take place on a somewhat narrower front than usual, they are heavy".[72] In April 1958, Fleming wrote to The Manchester Guardian in defence of his work, referring to both that paper's review of Dr. No and the article in The Twentieth Century. Fleming partly accepted the criticism concerning the exclusivity of Bond's objects, such as cigarettes and food, but defended it on the basis that "I had to fit Bond out with some theatrical props".[70] These included his cocktail, ("The Vesper") and Bond's diet. Fleming called these devices "vulgar foibles" which he was saddled with, although maybe, he suggested, "Bond's luxury meals are simply saying 'no' to toad-in-the-hole and tele-bickies."[70]

Writing in The Times Literary Supplement, Philip Stead was more generous to Dr. No. Despite thinking that Fleming was offering "too opulent a feast"[73] with the book, Stead argued that Fleming managed to pull this off, where "a less accomplished writer ... would never have got away with this story."[73] Raymond Chandler reviewed the novel for The Sunday Times and praised as "masterly" Fleming's depiction of colonial Kingston in the first chapter. Chandler admired Fleming's writing, which had "an acute sense of pace. ... You don't have to work at Ian Fleming. He does the work for you."[57]

The reviewer for Time acknowledged the critical storm around Fleming and Dr. No, but was broadly welcoming of the book, writing that while "not all readers will agree that Dr. No ... is magnificent writing, ... pages of it, at least, qualify for Ezra Pound's classic comment on Tropic of Cancer: 'At last, an unprintable book that is readable'."[42] In The New York Times, Anthony Boucher—described by Fleming's biographer John Pearson as "throughout an avid anti-Bond and an anti-Fleming man"[74]—was again damning of Fleming's work, saying "it's harder than ever to see why an ardent coterie so admires Ian Fleming's tales".[75] Benson described Boucher's critique as "true to form" and "a tirade"[76] as Boucher concluded his review by saying: "it is 80,000 words long, with enough plot for 8,000 and enough originality for 800."[75]

Glendy Culligan of The Washington Post described the novel as a "thin little whodunit which rocked the British Empire and shook the English Establishment", adding "Bully for it!"[77] Culligan admitted that "Confidentially though, we enjoyed Dr. No, and if this be sick, sick, sick, gentlemen, make the most of it." James Sandoe in his book review for The New York Herald Tribune was very positive about Dr. No and thought that it was "the most artfully bold, dizzyingly poised thriller of the decade. You'd much better read it than read about it."[76]

The writer Simon Winder believes that because Fleming was writing about Jamaica, the result was "perhaps the most attractive of all the Bond books—the most relaxed, the most fiendish, the most confident".[19] According to the literary analyst LeRoy L. Panek, in his examination of 20th century British spy novels, Fleming knew his outdated view of Jamaica would soon be overtaken by events—as evidenced by the novel's description of how the Queen's Club would be lost during independence struggles.[78][lower-alpha 8] According to the cultural historian Michael Denning, this acknowledgement of the end-of-empire leads to a "sense of doom" that is the result of "a shadow of real history hanging over the stories".[80]