Three weeks later, in London, March came in a like a rattlesnake.
This is the opening line of chapter two and sets something of a template that is not consistently recurring, but definitely reveals a pattern. The opening lines of the chapter often commence with the kind of stark figurative imagery that is not the norm for the book as a whole. And often these opening metaphors and similes are provided out of context with a meaning that only becomes apparent later on.
“All right, Dr. No. Now let’s get on with the cabaret.”
Bond finds himself caught in a tight spot. The metaphorical cabaret here is an attempt at coolness; perhaps a means of psychologically undermining his position of weakness at the moment. It is not entirely flippant, however, as he quickly lays out what the potential for the “cabaret” may be: “knife, bullet, poison, rope?”
Dr. No’s voice the crack of a whip.
An unusual preference for the metaphor over the simile in this case. The direct reference rather than comparison creates a sense of immediacy and tangibility. In this case, Fleming does not want to portray Dr. No’s anger second-hand, but make it palpable to increase the tension which comes at a moment when Bond’s life looks like it may be in actual peril.
The center of the room became a warm yellow pool in which the leather top of the desk glowed blood-red.
Here is another example of the opening paragraph of a new chapter made vivid through the kind of intense figurative imagery that the immediately disappears from the succeeding pages. This pattern in some ways becomes akin to stage directions in a play as Fleming wants to set aside his more colorful metaphors and similes for the purpose of staging the scene before letting his actors come in and fulfill that purpose through dialogue for the rest of the chapter.
There was something Dali-esque about the eyebrows, which were fine and black, and sharply upswept as if they had been painted on as makeup for a conjuror.
Fleming also seems to want to reserve the power of vivid figurative language for describing character. This is the description of Dr. No upon Bond’s first seeing him and comes amidst a series of paragraphs which serve to portray the titular villain’s strange sense of otherness primarily through the power of comparison. The images which are being compared—a head shaped like a reverse raindrop, eyes like the mouth of a revolver, a man walking looking like a worm gliding—all convey the same sense of the unnatural which connects strongly with the references above to surrealism, makeup, and magic.
