A trip to Harlem and where was Mr Big's HQ?

Fleming's second book, Live And Let Die, contains far more real life locations than in Casino Royale and it is evident that the author did a considerable amount of research to provide the intricate detail that would become one of the hallmarks of his work.


Bus Ride

Leiter and Bond venture uptown from the St Regis hotel to explore Harlem or "Mr Big's back-yard". They take the bus, probably the most un-Bond like transport in all the novels, which would most likely be route no. 2 of the Fifth Avenue Coach Company (route would have been Fifth Avenue, West 110th Street (Cathedral Parkway), 7th Avenue)

Bar Crawl

After a scotch-and-soda at Sugar Ray's, Bond and Leiter eat "Little Neck Clams and Fried Chicken Maryland with bacon and sweet corn" at Ma Frazier's.  This long closed restaurant was owned by Lula (Ma) Frazier and also known as Ma Frazier's Dining Room and Frazier's Restaurant.  Accounts vary as to the exact location although most accounts place it at 124th and 7th.  This is however, slightly contradicted by Fleming who implies it is further up the street from Sugar Ray's.  Other sources put it on the same block as Sugar Ray's, or opposite Sugar Ray's and also down the street from the Hotel Theresa (between 124th & 125th Streets),

After a another scotch at the Savoy Ballroom, Bond and Leiter skip Smalls Paradise and visit Yeah Man on West 136th Street before moving on to the fictional Boneyard on Lenox Avenue (since 1987 also known as Malcolm X Boulevard).

For more background to Bond's visit to Harlem, this is an excellent bit of research on Bruce Allen's site, Fleming's Bond.


So where is Mr Big's HQ?  

From Bond's escape, the HQ must be located between 7th Avenue and Lenox Avenue "He came to some red traffic lights and jumped them (Lenox Avenue). Several more dark blocks (5th Avenue, Madison Avenue) and then there was a lighted avenue (Park Avenue). There was traffic and he paused until the lights went green. He turned left (actually right) and was rewarded by a succession of green lights, each one sweeping him on and further away from the enemy."

As Bond turns right into Park Avenue, he can be no further North than 132nd Street (any higher than or no further South than 124th Street as Marcus Garvey Park is in the way.

Unfortunately the book gives no more clues as to the location of Mr Big's HQ but maybe there is something in Bruce Allen's suggestion that the Boneyard could well have been based on the real life Lenox Lounge at 288 Lenox Avenue.  If correct, this would place Mr Big's warehouse (which is about a block away) on either 124th Street or 125th Street (Dr Martin Luther King Boulevard).

I have placed Mr Big's Headquarters on 125th Street.  See my Google map to track Bond's routes to and from Harlem, plus over 850 other locations from Ian Fleming's Bond novels.

A few real life places from Casino Royale

Generally considered one of Fleming's best Bond novels, Casino Royale is interestingly one of the least lacking in location detail.  As we have already discussed, Royale-les-Eaux is a fictional town and on the whole, Fleming appears to have written the book based on his own experiences without any of the detailed research that he would do for his later work.


I have tried searching for other locations that appear to be in the area around Royale such as the Dubernes, Les Noctambules and L'Auberge du Fuit Defendu without success.  Similarly, 450 Charing Cross Place in London does not exist and Chaffery's is a fictional Jamaican company. 

However, in an attempt to give his novel some additional authenticity, Fleming does mention a few real life places:


RCA Building at Rockefeller Center, New York City, United States

"Well, in the last few years I've killed two villains. The first was in New York - a Japanese cipher expert cracking our codes on the thirty-sixth floor of the RCA building in the Rockefeller centre, where the Japs had their consulate. I took a room on the fortieth floor of the next-door skyscraper and I could look across the street into his room and see him working. Then I got a colleague from our organization in New York and a couple of Remington thirty-thirty's with telescopic sights and silencers. We smuggled them up to my room and sat for days waiting for our chance. He shot at the man a second before me. His job was only to blast a hole through the windows so that I could shoot the Jap through it. They have tough windows at the Rockefeller centre to keep the noise out. It worked very well. As I expected, his bullet got deflected by the glass and went God knows where. But I shot immediately after him, through the hole he had made. I got the Jap in the mouth as he turned to gape at the broken window." Casino Royale, chapter 20

Dachau Displaced Persons Camp, Munich, Germany

Concentration Camp located near Munich in Germany where Le Chiffre was encountered as a displaced person in June 1945. 



Casino, Monte Carlo, Monaco

World famous casino in Monaco.  Mentioned as the place where Bond "sat in the Casino in Monte Carlo for two months before the war watching that Roumanian team work their stuff with the invisible ink and the dark glasses. He and the Deuxiéme bowled them out in the end and 007 turned in a million francs he had won at shemmy". 


Used as a location in the films Never Say Never Again and Goldeneye.



Château de Fontainebleau, near Paris, France

Château located near Paris and from 1945-1966, the headquarters of NATO's Allied Forces Central Europe. Felix Leiter is based here.



Daily Gleaner, Kingston, Jamaica 

Jamaica's newspaper of record, at the time based at 148–156 Harbour Street, Kingston.  Fawcett, the Picture Editor, is a representative of the Secret Service.



As ever, check out the Google map for these and over 850 other locations featured in the Bond novels.

Where is that moonlight trail that leads to your side?

I was playing around with Google Earth and for a bit of fun, I thought I would try and simulate the path of the rocket launch featured in Moonraker.

We know the launch time was 12:05pm but we can also pin the date down to 22 May 1953.  Bond historians John Griswold and Henry Chancellor both place the book in 1953 and the launch was in a week when Tuesday was "towards the end of May" (chapter 10).  As Monday 25th was a bank holiday in the UK in that year (and appears to be a normal working day in the book), the events must take place during the 3rd week of May 1954.

The arc appears really steep as the rocket flies 1,000 miles high (chapters 10, 12, 20, 24) but only travels 80 miles north east of the launch site near Kingsdown in Kent.

Apologies for the cryptic blog title, I guess the hardcore Bond fans will recognise the line from the Shirley Bassey song.

Where is the location of Royale-les-Eaux?

Royale is featured in the books Casino Royale and On Her Majesty's Secret Service but has slightly differing accounts of it's location.

In Casino Royale, the town is a fishing village North of Dieppe, it is near the mouth of the Somme and has a beach. Le Tréport is the best fit as any further south there is no beach and further north there is no fishing port. Le Tréport was also in the Seine-Inférieure département (now called Seine-Maritime).

It is harder to pin the location in OHMSS down - the book clearly points to the location being Le Touquet but Le Touquet is separately mentioned in the book. There is no nearby coastal town north of Le Touquet so I have chosen Stella Plage. However, if Bond and Tracey were both driving to a location south of Le Touquet, why did they drive through Montreuil?

Good supporting info here and as always you can see all the Bond locations on the Google Map.