Year - 1954

Tease - Assignment: DANGER.  He's Mr. Big, the most powerful criminal in the world, head of the Black Widow Voodoo Cult, high-ranking member of the Soviet murder organization SMERSH.  His base of operations stretches from Harlem to the West Indies.  His henchmen are terror and fear.  He must be destroyed.  Only one man can do it.  And that man is you, James Bond.  If you succeed, you will break a crucial link in the Soviet spy chain.  But we need not warn you that if you fail . . . your penalty will be death - the most horrifying death the fiendishly clever Mr. Big has ever devised.

Villain - Buonaparte Ignace Gallia a.k.a. Mr. Big, half African half French.  He has a 'great football of a head, twice the normal size and very nearly round.  The skin is gray-black, taut and shining like the face of a week-old corpse in the river.  Hairless, except for some gray-brown fluff above the ears.  No eyebrows or eyelashes and his eyes are extraordinarily far apart, so that one could not focus on them both.  His gaze upon people is steady and penetrating.  When they rest on something they seem to devour it.

Bond-Girl - Simone Latrelle a.k.a. Solitaire, a blue-black hair beauty who is well versed in the world of Voodoo and the occult.  She is telepathic and uses an ordinary deck of cards to find the 'truth' in people Mr. Big wants to know.  She is called Solitaire because she will not have anything to do with men, until she meets OO7.

Minor Characters - Felix Leiter, Tee Hee, The Robber, Captain Dexter.

Plot - Mr. Big is helping to finance SMERSH operations in America with pirate gold found in the Caribbean.

Highlights - Meeting with Mr. Big in Harlem, fight with the Robber in fish warehouse, and climatic showdown in lagoon.

Opening Sentence - There are moments of great luxury in the life of a secret agent.

Trivia - Original title was going to be The Undertaker's Wind and Felix Leiter originally did not survive the shark attack.

Personal Comment About This Novel - Considering how dated this story is and the way some of the black characters are portrayed - the novel is still very exciting and well worth the read.

Jonathan Cape hardcover edition

Dr. Shatterhand's Scale from 1 - 10

"9"

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