邦德有了基友 007小說系列再出新作

James Bond is a synchronic spy. From the day that the first Bond thriller, “Casino Royale,” was published in 1953, all the way through to this year’s forthcoming “Spectre” movie, Bond has always been thoroughly modern, with all the latest toys. In “Trigger Mortis: A James Bond Novel,” however, Bond ventures somewhere Ian Fleming, or the movie producer Albert Broccoli, would never go: back, into the past.

詹姆斯·邦德是一個與歷史完全同步的間諜。從1953年第一部邦德驚悚小說《皇家賭場》(Casino Royale)穿開始，直至今年即將上映的《007：大破幽靈危機》(Spectre)電影，邦德一直都是那樣現代，用的都是最先進的玩意兒。然而在《觸發動機：007小說》(Trigger Mortis: A James Bond Novel)中，邦德的冒險旅途來到了小說家伊恩·弗萊明(Ian Fleming)或電影製片人艾伯特·布洛柯里(Albert Broccoli)都不曾去過的地方：向後，回到過去。

“Trigger Mortis” is a sequel, of sorts, to 1959’s “Goldfinger,” which means that it too is set in the late 1950s. The author, Anthony Horowitz, commissioned by the Fleming estate to write a book “that could have come from Ian’s own typewriter,” says that he tried to write “the most authentic James Bond novel anyone could have written,” while also admitting that “trying to capture Fleming’s style was not easy.”

《觸發動機》在某種程度上是1959年的《金手指》(Goldfinger)的續集，也就是說，故事的背景發生在20世紀50年代末期。作者安東尼·霍洛維茨(Anthony Horowitz)受弗萊明遺產委員會授權，創作一本 “宛如出自伊恩本人的打字機”的小說。他說，他想寫一個“任何人都有可能寫出來的、最真實的007小說”，但也承認，“弗萊明的風格不是那麼好學的。”

In truth, the task is impossible. The Bond of “Goldfinger” isn’t only a sexist drunk who dismisses women by saying things like “There’s no point in being a suffragette about this”; he’s also an unapologetic racist who looks out from his hotel room at gardeners “picking up leaves with the lethargic slow motion of colored help” and sees Koreans as being “rather lower than apes in the mammalian hierarchy.”

事實上，這根本就是個不可能完成的任務。《金手指》中的邦德是個大男子主義的酒鬼，他看不起女人，說過“這種事沒必要讓女人蔘與”之類的話；他還是個堅決的種族主義者，從酒店房間往外看的時候，說那些園丁“打掃落葉，皮膚帶顏色的助手用懶洋洋的慢動作在旁邊幫忙”；他說朝鮮人“在哺乳類動物的級別中比猿猴排位還低”。

So although “Trigger Mortis” begins two weeks after the end of “Goldfinger,” its protagonist isn’t — could never be — the same Bond. The new Bond is friends with a gay man, chivalrously sleeps on the couch when a woman doesn’t want to have sex with him and even, at one point, drinks a bottle of water at lunch. What’s more, where before there were only Bond “girls,” now we find strong, independent Bond “women.” One of them shows little interest in him and goes off with a woman instead; another, Jeopardy Lane, is a bona fide action hero in her own right.

所以，儘管《觸發動機》的故事發生在《金手指》結束兩個星期之後，但它的主角卻並不是——永遠也不可能再是——同一個邦德了。新的邦德和一個男同性戀成了好朋友；一個女人不願意和他上牀，他就頗有騎士風度地睡在沙發上；某次吃午飯的時候更是沒有喝酒，只喝了一瓶水。此外，以前的邦女郎其實只是“邦女孩”，現在我們有了真正強悍、獨立的“邦女人”。其中一個女人對他沒什麼興趣，和另一個女人好上了；還有一個叫賈帕迪·雷恩(Jeopardy Lane)的姑娘憑她自己的本事，成了書中真正的動作英雄。

Setting a new Bond novel in the past has other problems too. While it’s easy for thriller writers to get excited about today’s state-of-the-art gadgets, it’s much harder to realistically convey how a spy would have felt about the toys of 55 years ago. “Trigger Mortis” is clearly underpinned by a large amount of diligent research, but the recitation of the horsepower of a V-2 rocket, or the muzzle velocity of an M60 machine gun, feels somehow dutiful. And Horowitz’s research sometimes comes up puzzlingly short: Rail sheds were at no time illuminated by “neon lights hung on chains.” More glaringly, New Yorkers could have told him that there aren’t two stations between Jay Street and York Street on the F line.

寫一部發生在過去的全新007小說也帶來另外一個問題。驚悚小說作家很容易對如今的先進技術小玩意感興趣，但是要逼真地描寫一個間諜如何使用55年前的工具，這就困難得多。《觸發動機》建立在大量辛勤研究的基礎之上，但是對V-2火箭馬力、M60機槍初速度之類的描述，不免讓人覺得照本宣科。霍洛維茨的研究有時莫名其妙地令人失望，比如火車站絕不會被“成串成串的霓虹燈”照亮。更加明顯的是，紐約人都可以告訴他，F線上的傑伊街與約克街之間並沒有兩個車站。

Still, the heart of any thriller is the plot, and here Horowitz doesn’t disappoint. The action moves with high velocity from Britain to Germany to the United States and back to Britain, the odds are always in the bad guys’ favor, and the villain is a dastardly millionaire straight out of central casting. A mysterious mogul with a dark history and no regard for human life, he also has, naturally, a weakness for delaying the execution of spies by explaining to them, in detail, the cunning and despicable plot they were sent to discover. He should have killed Bond when he had the chance.

不過，任何驚悚小說的核心都是情節，這方面霍洛維茨並未令人失望。故事高速運轉，從英國來到德國，再到美國，然後又回到英國。壞人一直佔據上風，反面人物是個懦弱的百萬富翁，完全不怎麼出場。他是個有黑暗歷史的神祕大人物，根本不在乎人命，當然，他也有那種致命弱點——在處決間諜之前要先耽擱一下，把那些陰謀詭計的來龍去脈給對方詳細解釋清楚。要不他本來有機會殺掉邦德的。

Horowitz also stays true to the Bond of Fleming’s books rather than the Bond of the movies. His hero is human, self-doubting, weak, in a way that is hard for a movie star to be in the context of a decades-long franchise and Monty Norman’s immortal James Bond theme. And while Horowitz’s loving pastiche lacks Fleming’s flashes of brilliance, it should be more than good enough for the fans. The only real question is why anybody felt the need for this book to be written in the first place. Much of the excitement of Bond comes from his contemporaneity. Instead of trying to rehabilitate the bigoted Bond of the 1950s, we should keep our dapper spy in the movies of the present, where he belongs.

霍洛維茨更忠於弗萊明的邦德小說原著，而不是電影。他筆下的主角有人性、會自我懷疑，也有軟弱的一面；對於幾十年來的商業大片裏的電影明星，乃至蒙蒂·諾爾曼(Monty Norman)不朽的詹姆斯·邦德主題電影配樂來說，要呈現這樣的性格是很困難的。雖然霍洛維茨非常有愛的仿作缺乏弗萊明的靈感火花，但是對於粉絲來說也已經足夠精彩。唯一真正的問題是，爲什麼一開始會有人覺得有必要寫這樣一本書呢？邦德真正的魅力很大程度上來自他的時代性。與其說致力於恢復50年代那個古板的邦德，我們還是應該把那個漂亮的間諜留在當今的電影裏，他屬於那裏。