CHICAGO — James Bond is alive and well and living on a street in a pleasant northwestern suburb with wide lawns and many white houses and at least one prolific novelist.
Bond lives mostly in the head of a writer named Raymond Benson, as he has for decades. But Bond is just one part of the Benson bookshelf. He has written more than 40 books and counting, the latest being a fine and inventive novel titled “The Mad, Mad Murders of Marigold Way” (Beaufort Books).
Set in May 2020 with the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic ever-present but never intrusive, it is, as the book’s charmingly playful and thoughtful narrator says in the novel’s first line, “Friends, this is a little tale about some murders.”
That it is, as two prominent residents of the fictional Chicago suburb of Lincoln Grove vanish. One is Marie, the wife of Scott Hatcher, a former television writer turned novelist. The other is John Bergman, husband of housewife Rachel. The couples, now shattered, lived across the street from one another. And if you think the living partners are the prime suspects, you would not be wrong.
There is death and fire and all manner of neatly handled twists and turns and a not-so-surprising love affair and considerable dark comedy, all of it narrated by an engagingly opinionated character who frequently chimes in at the beginning of most of the book’s 49 chapters. We get commentary about other characters, editorializing, speculation. And some misdirection, as in, “OK, friends, you’ve met the hero of the story … or is he?”
There are also weightier observations: “I believe humans are born with the capability of working and playing well with others, being smart about science and politics, and coexisting peacefully. The problem is that humans make mistakes. They’re fallible, they take too many gambles, they’re greedy, and too often they just don’t think. Human beings are the most self-destructive creatures on the planet.”
Benson knows how to forcefully drive a narrative and the book is peppered with compelling characters amid a satisfyingly knotty mystery. I don’t want to tell you much more, lest I spoil things. I can tell you that a Publishers Weekly review called the book “a stellar mystery … a wild roller coaster of a novel is an attention-grabber from first page to last.”
Benson says that among the influences for this latest novel are playwright/novelist Thornton Wilder, especially his “Our Town” play, and the moviemaking Coen brothers for the “wicked, absurd quality they bring to their films.”
But now, back to Bond. It always comes back to Bond.
If that irritates Benson, he doesn’t show it, saying, “I owe a great deal to James Bond, even if most every interview starts with him.”
Born and raised in the west Texas city of Midland, Benson “met” Bond when his father took him to see “Goldfinger” in 1964. “I was nine,” Benson said. “I was grabbed by the character and I read all the paperbacks I could find, saw all the movies when they were released. I loved (Bond’s creator, novelist) Ian Fleming.”
He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a drama production-directing degree and, as are many young theater folk, was drawn to New York City, where he played piano and composed music for, as he says, “a lot of off, off, way off-Broadway theaters.”
His Bond passion came roaring back and he wrote “The James Bond Bedside Companion,” which was published in 1984 to considerable critical acclaim, including being nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe Award for biographical/critical work.
That might have been that, had Benson not gotten a phone call in 1996. He was living here then, writing narratives and designing computer games, when representatives of the Ian Fleming estate called to ask if he’d like to tackle writing a Bond novel. Others had done so after Fleming’s 1964 death and Benson would be the first American to do so. “The call came out of the blue,” he says. “And I jumped at the opportunity.”
In the ensuing years, he would produce six original Bond novels, three novelizations of Bond films and a few short stories. When his Bond journey ended he found himself “typecast and it took a few years to reinvent myself.”
That resulted in a steady stream of books, among them what he refers to as “perhaps my magnum opus,” five novels that comprise his Black Stiletto Saga, wonderfully inventive — I have read two so far — thrillers that travel from contemporary times back to late 1950s Los Angeles and New York, and the title character is a female, crime-fighting vigilante.
Benson is a lively and charming guy, though he admits to being “grumpy” while he is crafting the detailed narrative outlines with which he starts every new book. Maybe not that “grumpy,” since his wife Randi, who is his first reader, says, “It is fun for me to see his process in action.”
