"A businessman who’s been tossed out of Hong Kong just as the Chinese take
over the British colony plots revenge by using a soliton to create mega-waves
that will flood tunnels bored into the landfill beneath parts of the island,
bringing much of the place down in piles of rubble as the villain escapes with
a fortune in looted gold. Unfortunately for scheming construction king Richard
Curtis, his warm-up, in which he uses the soliton on his own private island off
the Australian coast, is witnessed by Jerry Diedrich, the environmental
activist of Planetwatch, who has a special reason for keeping a close eye on
Curtis, and volunteer diver Kim Baldur, who leaps into the water in defiance of
Curtis engineer George Manville’s no-trespassing warning moments before the
soliton starts churning the waters. Against all odds, Kim survives the shock
waves that follow. Curtis wants her dead anyway; Manville struggles to keep her
alive."
James Bond was returning in 1995’s GoldenEye after a nearly six year absence
from the silver screen. While the Bond producing team at Eon Productions were
confident that this reboot was going to work, they were still hedging their
bets. In March of 1995, eight months before the release the 17th
film in the franchise, Donald E. Westlake was contacted by Jeff Kleeman, a
producer on the series, to help come up with story ideas for next Bond film. While
Westlake provided a few story ideas, eventually due to the success of
GoldenEye, the forthcoming sale of MGM/UA, who wanted to go out on a high, the elements
Westlake came up with for the 18th Bond film (what became Tomorrow Never Dies)
ended up not being used (actually, Kleeman’s Afterword does a great job at
explaining the history of Westlake’s involvement with James Bond).
Like most
authors, Westlake was not one to let a good story go to waste, so sometime after
ending his association with Bond producers (1996/97) he wrote an original novel
based on the premise instead. Westlake obviously retooled the tale, taking out any references to
copyrighted elements, but the book does resemble a James Bond film with exotic
locals -Brisbane to Singapore to Hong Kong, along with double-crosses,
counterespionage, and action set pieces that have all become the part of every
Bond film. Except, of course, there is no superspy, no James Bond.
As prolific as Westlake was, Forever and a Death would never be published while he was
alive. Digging into how this book came about, I discovered that part of the reason
this novel was shelved may have to do with the reception it got from the people
whose opinions he valued. With an original manuscript clocking in at 610 pages,
maybe they felt the book was unwieldy? Published in 2017, nearly a decade after
Westlake’s passing, the book that has been boiled down to a more manageable
length by Charles Ardai. It’s still a bit overlong, but it certainly
neither as nihilistic as his Parker books (writing as Richard Stark), nor as
humorous as his Dortmunder tales.
I also read somewhere that had this book ever saw the light of day while
Westlake was alive, it probably would’ve been published under one of the many pseudonyms he used over the years.
There is also, in some ways, a question of whether a book left unfinished or
complete, but in an early draft format, should be published posthumously. After
all, Forever and a Death (one of the names Westlake suggested for a Bond film
title) in its current format was not a true Westlake novel because the writer
never fully completed it. It was edited down by someone else and what was taken
out or what was left in may not have been what Westlake would’ve done.
Still, it’s a good book and would’ve made a good Bond film.
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