Solitaire

Background

The novel names her Simone Latrelle, a Haitian-born woman of French stock whom the Haitians call Solitaire for keeping men out of her life. When James Bond meets her she is twenty-five years old and one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen, with blue-black hair and pale skin. At their first meeting, in the presence of Mr Big, she comes across as superior, cold and disdainful, but once she has escaped from Mr Big she immediately becomes warm, open and passionate towards Bond.

Initiated into voodoo as a child, she can foretell the future and judge whether people are lying even in languages she does not speak; Mr Big found her doing a mind-reading act in a Haitian cabaret and kept her as a virtual hostage, planning for her to have his children. When Mr Big uses her to interrogate Bond, her mental abilities immediately tell her that he is the one who will rescue her, so she covers for Bond by lying to Mr Big. She later escapes and accompanies Bond on his assignment, though the gangster locates and kidnaps her and tries to kill them both by towing them over a Jamaican reef; the effort fails when Mr Big's boat is destroyed by a mine Bond had earlier planted. Fleming never says what became of her; in Dr No Bond wonders about her whereabouts.

In the 1973 film Solitaire is a psychic in the employ of Dr Kananga. As Bond travels to New York by plane, she describes his journey to Kananga through the use of Tarot cards; the one drawback to her ability is that she must remain a virgin in order to preserve it. She picks The Lovers card for Bond twice and lies to Kananga about the second reading; Bond then seduces her with a deck made only of Lovers cards, and with her virginity she loses her gift. After escaping to New Orleans with Bond she is recaptured and taken back to San Monique to be sacrificed in a voodoo ceremony, from which Bond rescues her while Quarrel Jr destroys Kananga's opium poppy fields.

Screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz has stated that although Solitaire is white in the novel, he initially wrote her as black, with Diana Ross in mind. United Artists president David Picker objected on the basis that there were several countries where the film could not be released if there were relations between Bond and Solitaire. Ian Kinane argues that casting Seymour erased the character's cultural hybridity, and Joyce Goggin places her at the centre of the film's play with voodoo and the Tarot.