Nonfiction
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang: The Boom in British Thrillers From Casino Royale to The Eagle Has Landed

by Mike Ripley
HarperCollins, May 2017, $27.99

Mike Ripley’s account of the British spy/adventure/thriller output between the 1953 birth of Ian Fleming’s James Bond and Jack Higgins’ bestselling 1975 breakthrough is thorough, engagingly written, and an important contribution to genre scholarship. Alongside the literary history is a parallel view of postwar Britain and its intelligence agencies. Appendices include multi-page biographical notes on 16 “leading players” from Desmond Bagley to Alan Williams, single paragraphs on more than 130 in the “supporting cast” from James Aldridge to Andrew York, extensive notes and references, and a 12-page index.

Ripley has a humorist’s eye for absurdity and metaphor that demands quotation. Discussing James Bond’s Orient Express battle with Red Grant in From Russia, With Love: “Bond has given his gun to Grant, proving perhaps that he wasn’t always the sharpest knife in the attaché case.” On James Leasor’s Dr. Jason Love: “[K]ey characters in several books are murdered in front of Love’s very eyes in Chapter One, which must be doubly disheartening for a spy and a doctor.” From Alistair MacLean on Brian Callison’s A Flock of Ships, a great example of blurbing gone overboard: “The best war story I have ever read….Makes All Quiet on the Western Front look like one of the lesser works of Enid Blyton.”

Jon L. Breen
Teri Duerr
5977
Ripley
May 2017
kiss-kiss-bang-bang-the-boom-in-british-thrillers-from-casino-royale-to-the-eagle-has-landed
27.99
HarperCollins