Raymond Benson’s second James Bond novel follows in the style of his first, Zero Minus Ten, but moves in an even more fantasy-fueled direction. Where his first book feels like an odd alliance of Ian Fleming and the Pierce Brosnan movies, The Facts of Death reads exactly like an unused script for one of the late ‘90s Eon Productions films. Gadgetry is at a premium, the villains are a loony independent terrorist organization based on the standard SPECTRE theme, and the Q Branch scenes are carbon-copies of the usual cinema repartee. Benson makes a number of Fleming references (and even a few to Kingsley Amis’s Colonel Sun) and brings back the popular character Felix Leiter in a major role, but otherwise this is a palimpsest of the film series version of 007 with no excuses. Even John Gardner’s novels, which definitely adhere closer the films, never got more obviously cinematic. Benson, in an interview for CommanderBond.net, admitted as much: “I think The Facts of Death is my most Eon-like novel. I purposefully set out to write something that felt like a Bond movie with that one.”

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? That might depend on your opinion of the Brosnan films, which serve as the model here. The plot never skimps on action, but much of it would work better on movie screens than it does on the printed page. In a book, a simple tense exchange of gunfire can make for electric reading, while an intricate chase with a gadget-laden car that can change colors and launch a drone that drops aerial mines can turn silly and tiresome. Benson plots the story in “location jumps” like the Eon films, such as having Bond engage in a fight in the ruins of the ancient city of Mycenae just because it’s an historical monument and therefore a ‘cool’ place to pad out a basic fistfight. Again, such scenic detours for action passages mean more on screen. (The sequence in question also reads uncomfortably like the encounter with Jaws among the Egyptian ruins in the movie The Spy Who Loved Me. Very distracting.)

The story is pleasantly fanciful in a popcorn thriller sort of way. A series of murders of British agents in Greece and Cyprus that are accompanied by numerical calling cards pulls Bond into a case that may have a connection to bizarre disease outbreaks in Tokyo and Los Angeles. The murder of Alfred Hutchinson, the British Goodwill Ambassador, further ignites the investigation—and Hutchinson also happens to be M’s lover. The trail of the “Number Killer” initially takes Bond to a Texas fertility clinic and a reunion with old buddy Felix Leiter, who is now confined to a wheelchair. The clues lead back to Greece and Cyprus (in fact, the trip to Texas wasn’t necessary except to get Leiter in the story and give Benson a chance to write about his home state), where tensions between the Greeks and Turks create a delicate situation.

Against the realistic cyclorama of nationalist hostility over Cyprus, Benson introduces an outrageous cabal of robe-wearing SPECTRE-wannabes known as the Decada, who worship the philosophy of Hellenic mathematician Pythagoras and have a death wish for the Turks. Their arithmetic obsession and clues they leave with their victims make the Decada a better fit in a Batman comic book. They do provide more fun than the glum villain Guy Thackeray of Zero Minus Ten, but their ultimate scheme isn’t as easily graspable as Thackeray’s attractively basic revenge plot.

The book sometimes plummets into silliness, such as the “yuk-yuk” sequence of Bond going to a fertility clinic, getting it on in one of the rooms with the center’s sexy director, and finishing with some predictable puns. Groan. Picturing the grinning teen boys reading this makes it all the more aggravating. In a rare formula departure Bond gets to use his analytical mind for the finale, but the brain-teaser puzzle the villain sets up for him to solve comes from another genre entirely and doesn’t match 007’s capabilities. Again, I have to wonder if Benson was thinking more along the lines of Batman than Bond. And perhaps readers should skip to the very last line of the book and read the awful pun there so they can get the involuntary spasms over with now. It won’t spoil any of the story, honest.

James Bond has a few traces of his Fleming-era melancholy, but unfortunately this all but suffocates under a veneer of Brosnan- and Moore-inspired quips. Bond acts more like a smartass, oversexed teen who gets to carry a gun (please reference the above-mentioned sperm bank scene) than a professionally trained secret agent. John Gardner ignored much of Fleming’s background, but at least his Bond wasn’t mugging for non-existent cameras. This 007 seems painfully aware of being on screen and subsequently plays to the audience.

The strongest parts of the book and the sections where Bond seems most fleshed-out, are his interactions with the current and former ‘M’s, Barbara Mawdsley and Miles Messervy. (The revelation of the current M’s name isn’t canonical with the character in the movies.) Seeing the old battleship Sir Miles return, even if only as a retiree giving avuncular advice to his former top agent, is a thrill. He still has those “damnably clear grey eyes” that Fleming mentioned and which Benson loves to repeat. As for the current M, she gets to stretch beyond the office and turn into more of human being than in the Eon films. Not since Colonel Sun has the non-Fleming M had so much personally at stake in the story. But it fades away in the second half, and her lover’s potentially juicy involvement in the Decada affair vanishes like a whimper.

The girl, Niki Mirakos of Greek intelligence, is physically modeled on Melina Havelock from For Your Eyes Only but stands firmly in the cinematic tradition that pairs Bond with capable and beautiful espionage operatives. Niki is yet another of these super-agent super-models who can hold their own with Bond. The frequent attempts to combat 007’s sexism that started in earnest with The Spy Who Loved Me has turned this character type in a cliché that needs to be put out to pasture for a time, and Niki adds nothing new to the device.

The adversaries have improved over Benson’s last effort. The femme fatale, Hera Voulopoulos, is memorable and instigates a twist conclusion that pushes the story in an unexpected direction. Romanos Konstantine, the “Monad” of Decada, is a slick character in the billionaire-with-a-grudge model. He’s nothing spectacular, but does his job adequately. His requisite card game against 007—a back-to-the-basic baccarat match—is unnecessary and dull, however.