“Octopussy”

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“Heavy drinkers veer toward an exaggeration of their basic temperaments, the classic four—sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholic.”

Published:

• Playboy, March and April, 1966.
• Part of Octopussy and the Living Daylights, 1966.

Overview: In this posthumous short story, James Bond goes to Jamaica to confront Major Dexter Smythe, a wartime Secret Service agent who murdered an Austrian mountain climber for a cache of Nazi gold. (The Austrian, Hannes Oberhauser, was a friend of 007’s.) Instead of turning himself in, Smythe meets a rather unusual end involving a mollusk.

What does Bond drink? Not a thing. When Smythe offers Bond a rum and ginger ale, 007 says “No thanks.”

Other people’s drinks: Dexter Smythe is an alcoholic. We learn that despite a doctor’s orders to limit his drinking to two ounces of whisky a day, he goes to bed each night “amiably drunk.” When Bond arrives, Smythe is drinking a stiff brandy and ginger ale, the “Drunkard’s Drink.” He makes a second one before he goes outside to confess to 007. Other drinks mentioned during the story include martinis, cheap schnapps, and the Pink Gin (one of Ian Fleming’s favorite cocktails).

Total: Zero.