James Bond novel #3 - Moonraker

Without doubt Moonraker is the most underestimated of the Bond novels, probably because it was one of the few early books that wasn’t adapted for film until much later (and a fairly lamentable adaptation it was too, with Roger Moore gooning his way through a very poor script and the normally excellent Michael Lonsdale playing a demented Drax).

The novel begins with M asking James Bond to investigate the multi-millionaire businessman Sir Hugo Drax, who is winning a lot of money playing bridge at M's favourite club, Blades. M suspects Drax of cheating, but although claiming indifference, he is concerned why a multi-millionaire and national hero, such as Sir Hugo, would cheat at a card game. Bond confirms Drax's deception and manages to "cheat the cheater" — aided by a cocktail of powdered Benzedrine mixed with non-vintage champagne and a deck of stacked cards — winning £15,000 and infuriating the out-smarted Drax.

Drax is the product of a mysterious background, unknown even to himself (allegedly). As a supposed British soldier in WWII, he was badly injured, and stricken with amnesia, in the explosion of a bomb planted by a German saboteur at his field headquarters. After extensive rehabilitation in an army hospital, however, he would eventually return home to become a major aerospace industrialist.

Now, Drax and his firm are building the "Moonraker", Britain's first nuclear missile project, intended to defend the United Kingdom against its Cold War enemies (c.f. the real Blue Streak missile). Essentially, the Moonraker rocket is an upgraded V-2 rocket using liquid hydrogen and fluorine as propellants. It can withstand the ultra-high combustion temperatures in its engine thanks to the use of columbite, of which Drax has a monopoly. Therefore, because the rocket's engine can withstand higher heat, the Moonraker can use more powerful fuels, greatly expanding its effective range.

After a Ministry of Supply security officer working at the project is shot dead, M assigns Bond to replace him, and also to investigate what may be going on at the missile-building base, which is located between Dover and Deal on the coast of England. Oddly, all of the rocket scientists working on the project seem to be German.

At his post on the complex (where he is billeted in the Drax mansion), Bond meets Gala Brand, a beautiful Special Branch agent working undercover as Personal Assistant to Drax. He also uncovers some clues concerning his predecessor's death, concluding that the former Security Chief might have been killed for witnessing the clandestine delivery of some secret cargo by submarine off the coast.

Drax's henchman Krebs is caught by Bond while he snoops through his room. Later, an attempted assassination nearly kills Bond and Gala under a landslide, as they swim beneath the Dover cliffs. Drax takes Gala to London where she discovers the truth about the "Moonraker" (by comparing her own launch trajectory figures with those in a notebook picked from Drax's pocket) - but she is caught. She soon finds herself captive at a secret radio station (intended to serve as a beacon for the missile's guidance system) in the heart of London. While attempting to rescue her in a car chase, Bond is captured, as well.

It turns out that Drax was never a British soldier and has never suffered from amnesia. In fact, he was a German commander of a Skorzeny commando unit and the saboteur (in British uniform) Graf Hugo von der Drache who set the bomb at the army field headquarters, only to be injured, himself, in the detonation. The amnesia story was simply a cover he used while recovering in hospital, in order to avoid allied retribution - though it would lead to a whole new British identity. Drax, however, remains a dedicated Nazi, bent on revenge against England for the wartime defeat of his Third Reich Fatherland and his prior history of social slights he suffered as a youth growing up in England before the war. He now means to destroy London with the very missile he has constructed for Britain, by means of a Soviet supplied nuclear warhead that has been secretly fitted to the "Moonraker". He also plays the stock market the day before to make a huge profit from the planned disaster.

Brand and Bond are imprisoned under the Moonraker's booster engines so as to leave no trace of them once the Moonraker is launched. But before this first (supposedly un-armed) test firing, Bond and Gala escape. Gala gives Bond the proper coordinates to reprogram the gyros and send the Moonraker into the sea. Having been in collaboration with Soviet Intelligence all along, Drax and his henchman attempt to escape by Russian submarine - only to be killed as the vessel flees through the very waters onto which the "Moonraker" has been re-targeted.

Later, after their de-briefing at headquarters, Bond meets up with Gala, expecting her company - but they part ways after Gala reveals that she is engaged to be married. It is the only Bond novel (discounting some of the short stories) in which Bond does not end up having a romantic relationship with the girl.

Moonraker is my favourite Bond novel, not least because there are no cinematic comparisons to blur the imagination. The Kent setting also resonates. In later years I couldn’t help but try and draw some comparisons between Sir Hugo Drax and Robert Maxwell, although for all of his many failings Maxwell was certainly never a Nazi!

Not a lot of people know that: The first adaption of Moonraker was on South African radio in 1956, with Bob Holness providing the voice of Bond. “I’ll have a consonant please M.”