<< > But I do have a question. I believe Bond's
personal choice of weapons
was
> a .28 caliber Beretta. My friend insists it was a
.25 Beretta, that there
> never has been a .28 Beretta. Can anybody give me a
definitive answer?
I don't know the answer Fred--the make sounds familiar--but
surely
anything with that small a calibre is 'a woman's gun'? There
is though
'a James Bond Book' in the local library--next time I'm in
there I'll
try to remember to check it to see if the size of Bond's
weapon is given
;-) >>
I don't know Fleming's books, but I think in Dr. No, at the
start, Bond has to
turn his Beretta over to M for the new standard issue Walther
PPK. Bond had
spent time in the hospital (or, to be idiomatic, I think, in
hospital) because
his Beretta had jammed or some such. At the end of the
meeting, Bond tries to
sneak out with the Beretta and M tells him to leave it.
Incidentally, Beretta
has been manufacturing light arms since something like the
16th century. They
began as a crossbow maker in Renaissance Italy.
In The Wrecking Crew, Helm complains that Mac's outfit has
become tainted by
peacetime bureaucracy because the agents now use .38s. Helm
says he prefers
the smaller, but easier to handle and more accurate .22. A
genre
marker--complaint about standard issue gun, with favor going
to the smaller
gun.
I once handled but did not shoot a Walther PPK that had been
owned by a
Vietnam vet who had supposedly used the gun for nefarious
underworld action.
Surely an instance of life imitating art. I can't imagine his
using the gun
without the example of Bond. There was also a very small
Walther that looked
like the PPK but was the size of a saturday night special; it
could be
concealed in the palm of one's hand.
More on Helm later.
Doug
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