Part One: Dr. No and the Grim Reaper

As fans of Ian Fleming's redoubtable spy know, Dr. Julius No is James Bond's adversary in Doctor No (1958), a novel that when adapted as a film in 1962 launched the most enduring franchise in the history of Western cinema. Since then, and for the most part, films chronicling Bond's adventures— as well as novels by John Gardner, Anthony Horowitz, Sebastian Faulks and others after Fleming's untimely passing in 1964—have flourished, and such phrases as “shaken, not stirred” and “Bond girls” are now part of our vernacular. So, too, are the names of some of Fleming's villains, with “Dr. No” used to lampoon dour politicians hostile to socially progressive legislation. In Northern Ireland and America, the press has employed “Dr. No” as a nickname for Ian Paisley, the late fundamentalist minister and founder of Northern Ireland's DUP and Senator Mitch McConnell, also known as “The Grim Reaper” and “Darth Vader,” among other sobriquets. For the most part, McConnell seems amused by these inventions; only “Moscow Mitch,” a reference to his indifference to Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election, appears to annoy him because of its implication that he is an “asset” of the Kremlin (Hulse, “Moscow Mitch”). Both men's capacity for negativism, the most obvious reason for these names, motivates my juxtaposition of them with Fleming's arch-villain—and with each other.

Outlining the Sisyphean labors of brokering the Good Friday Agreement, George Mitchell in Making Peace suggests such a comparison when recounting Paisley's recalcitrance during nearly two years of negotiations (which were preceded by some six months of painstaking preparatory work). On occasion, this abrasiveness serves as a structuring motif in Mitchell's narrative. In a chapter entitled “No. No. No. No,” inspired by Paisley's outburst at the inaugural meeting of the parties tasked with negotiating the Agreement, Mitchell recalls the DUP leader's “blistering attack” on the British and Irish governments for foisting an American senator on the group.