Year - 1956

Tease - "We're going to find out who you are and who you work for and what you know . . . If you think you can hold out on us you're wrong, dead wrong."  Seraffimo Spang spoke to James Bond gently . . . menacingly.  Two hooded men entered the room and sat opposite the secret agent.  They put down football boots beside them and started to unlace their shoes.  Spang spoke again.  "We'll make it a Brooklyn stomping.  Eighty per center.  Okay with you . . . Mr. Bond?"

Villains - Rufus B. Saye a.k.a. Jack Spang and his twin brother Seraffimo Spang, run a syndicate in America known as "The Spangled Mob".  They also run a pipeline from the diamond mines of French Guinea to London and then to Las Vegas.

Bond-Girl - Tiffany Case, a blonde beauty with cool gray eyes.  Sexually attractive but frigid, until she meets OO7.  She grew up in her mother's whorehouse and was raped at the age of 16.  This explains a great deal about her character and how she relates to men.  She is part of the Spangled Mob.

Minor Characters - Felix Leiter, Wint and Kidd, Shady Tree, Ernest Cureo.

Plot - Smuggling diamonds out of Africa and into the U.S.

Highlights - Mud bath scene at Saratoga Springs, Spectreville - Seraffimo's western ghost town and train, confrontation with Wint and Kidd onboard the Queen Elizabeth, blasting Jack Spang out of the sky with a Bofors artillery gun.

Opening Sentence - With its two fighting claws held forward like a wrestler's arms the big pandenus scorpion emerged with a dry rustle from the finger sized hole under the rock.

Trivia - The original names of Wint and Kidd were Wint and Gore.  Anne Fleming's cousin was nicknamed 'Boofy' Gore and insisted that Fleming change it.

Personal Comment About This Novel - Weakest of the early half of Fleming's books.  Too much time spent on locations and not enough on characters.  The villains are not developed enough compared to the earlier novels, Jack Spang comes across as the mastermind, but has too few scenes.

Jonathan Cape hardcover version

Dr. Shatterhand's Scale from 1 - 10

"6"

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