This month, I was motivated to write a response to a review of the print edition  posted at Amazon   on May 2, 2021 that I found extremely off target.

I won’t repeat the entire review here, but I’ll start my response to the review’s very first sentences: “This is not by Ian Fleming. It's not edited by Ian Fleming. It is not a comparison about the original Seven Deadly Sins and Fleming's Seven Deadlier Sins.”

That’s all true. Nowhere is it claimed the book is by Fleming; it’s writers commenting on Fleming’s 007 novels through the prisms of the terms Fleming never wrote about himself but listed In his foreword to his 1962 book he edited,  The Seven Deadly Sins. In that foreword, Fleming declared that the traditional seven deadly sins — PRIDE, ENVY, ANGER, SLOTH [accidie], COVETOUSNESS, GLUTTONY and LUST — were no longer sufficient. Instead, he proposed seven deadlier sins more worthy of a one way ticket to Hell, namely AVARICE, CRUELTY, HYPOCRISY, MALICE, MORAL COWARDICE, SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS & SNOBBERY.

The grumpy reviewer breezed past that  point, saying “This is a collection of essays by authors I'm unfamiliar with on the Deadlier Sins in James Bond movies and books, plus cultural references, like a Saturday Night Live sketch. Not worth your time.”

I have to concede we essayists aren’t all widely-known Bond scholars, which hurts a bit. I’ve written four books on movie, TV, and literary espionage including Spy Television (2003), Beyond Bond: Spies in Fiction and Film (2005), Onscreen and Undercover: The Ultimate Book of movie Espionage (2006) and countless essays, articles, and reviews in print anthologies and reference works  as well as  numerous print and online periodicals and websites. I’ve been interviewed on James Bond and espionage by TV, Podcast, and radio broadcasters for decades in  Boston, Washington D.C., Malaysia, Denmark, Germany, Turkey, and, most recently, I was the only English-speaking spy expert for a one-hour Al Jazeera documentary.   I’ve appeared several times at the International Spy Museum and the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention.  None of this, admittedly, makes me a household name. But I do got some cred, yes? 

I can’t speak to the track record of the other contributors, but I can say I just reread the book and was again impressed with the depth of the research, the seriousness of the critiques, and the insights on a par with academic scholars discussing authors like Leo Tolstoy, Walt Whitman, or Mark Twain. The book was not “whipped out in 2020” as the reviewer claimed.

In particular, I’d like to compliment Edward Biddulph who wrote on “hypocrisy” and Michael May’s essay on “Self-righteousness.” To be fair, all the essays, even those only three or five pages long, gave me fresh perspectives and new insights any serious Ian Fleming aficionado would benefit from reading.

I should add readers don’t need to purchase a copy of the collection as all seven essays are still available in their original forms: HERE

Speaking of cred, scan that website and you can enjoy a rich well of Ian Fleming focused resources. Be your own judge and don’t be dissuaded by  an unknown online critic with no cred I’m aware of.

Links to many of my interviews and online materials can be found HERE