The novel Moonraker has only the barest resemblance to the mediocre 1979 movie, and as usual, Bond as Fleming conceived him is less perfect and far more interesting. He doesn't even get the girl at the end!
Something enjoyable happens once you get a few novels deep into a series: you grow to learn the characters' nuances and idiosyncrasies, you see depth and subtlety in their interactions and relationships, and as a reader you get to experience these things at a gradual, more natural pace. An author can't dump a ton of backstory and character nuances onto his readers all at once in one mere novel: it's too much, too soon. You have to have a few Sherlock Holmes under your belt before you can handle finding out Holmes is a cocaine addict, or that he makes astoundingly condescending remarks to Watson without even realizing it. Or for a more modern example, readers warm up to Harry Bosch more and more as they see his odd habits--like absently reaching into his coat pocket for a pack of cigarettes that's never there, since he quit smoking years before. Across a series of novels the author can gradually establish these traits in a way that rewards rather than buries the reader.
One final thought if you'll indulge me. I would have loved to have had the chance to recommend Moonraker to my father just for the bridge game scene early on in the book. My Dad loved bridge: he enthusiastically taught all four of his kids how to play (although none of it really took with any of us), and this part of the novel would have really grabbed him. To most modern readers this scene's pacing will seem all wrong--it's too slow, it feels like nothing's happening, and the very least the reader needs to understand the basics of bridge to follow what's going on. But real bridge players would love it: Bond deals (from a secretly prearranged deck) a very specific set of hands, tempting one opponent to bid aggressively, but yet still enabling Bond to win a grand slam with a very long suit of mostly low clubs. I have a feeling my Dad would have carefully gone over this part of the book, working out in his head precisely how players might bid this hand out, how they might play it out, and what the results would be.
Notes:
* "Cheats at cards?": Drax, the villain, is found to be a card cheat, and Bond is both appalled and incredulous. On how doing something in a seemingly small domain gives away everything about your character. "In so-called 'Society', it's about the only crime that can still finish you, whoever you are."
* "Now, Miles, what am I to do?" We learn M's real name.
* The long, leisurely chapters describing the events at M's card club are interesting: they give a sense of a cultural institution that was already archaic in the 1950s and likely barely exists today.
* On Marthe Richard's Law: what a rabbit hole this was! Tying Casino Royale to this novel by mentioning a French law outlawing prostitution in 1946.
* Bond takes Benzedrine for the second time in two novels, this time right in front of M, just before his attempt to trap Drax in a bridge game. This whole scene is done quite well, there's a low-grade suspense, but the reader doesn't know exactly why or what's going to happen.
* "Bond with a cigarette with hands that it's suddenly become quite steady. His mind was clear. He knew exactly what he had to do, and when, and he was glad that the moment of decision had come." Bond then deals out of a pre-arranged deck with a unique bridge hand where he can win a grand slam with mostly low clubs.
* Again we see how Bond is not the Mary Sue character portrayed in the movies: he has vacillatingly inaccurate opinions about Drax, begining with disgust and repulsion when he meets him for the first time, later changing to near-reverence once he sees his Moonraker rocket project, to the point where Bond finds himself making excuses for the man's deeply ungentlemanly behavior earlier on: "Bond followed silently as Drax led the way down the steep iron ladder that curved down the side of the steel wall. He felt a glow of admiration and almost of reverence for this man and his majestic achievement. How could he ever have been put off by Drax's childish behavior at the card table? Even the greatest men have their weaknesses. Drax must need an outlet for the tension of the fantastic responsibility he was carrying."
* The Cicero affair, another historical rabbit hole: Cicero was the codename of a Turkish spy who leaked British information to Germany during World War II.
* "Leck mich am Arsch" might be a handy insult to remember one day, you never know.
* "'My real name,' said Drax, addressing himself to Bond, 'is Graf Hugo von der Drache. My mother was English and because of her I was educated in England until I was twelve. Then I could stand this filthy country no longer and I completed my education in Berlin and Leipzig.'"
* "Lombroso theory" (another rabbit hole!): "Cesare Lombroso argued that criminals could be identified through general characteristics they shared with one another, which he designated as composing a criminal type. His core idea was atavism, which means that he understood criminals to be evolutionary throwbacks who were inferior to non criminals. Lombroso was an Italian eugenicist, criminologist, phrenologist, physician, and founder of the Italian school of criminology. He is considered the founder of modern criminal anthropology by changing the Western notions of individual responsibility." Interesting to see which aspects of Lombroso's theory must be accepted and which must be rejected, given the mores of postmodern society.
* "The boy stood on the burning deck. I've wanted to copy him since I was five." Bond makes a cute reference here to the poem "Casabianca" by Felicia Hemans, well-known to British schoolchildren of the mid-20th century and before, virtually unknown to American readers of my era and after:
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead...
To Read:
John Scarne: Scarne on Cards
John Scarne: The Odds Against Me: An Autobiography