The fifth installment in the ongoing saga of adventures featuring the consummate spy James Bond, this novel helped make the series an international phenomenon when, in 1961, President John F. Kennedy named it as one of his favorite books. As a literary image of the historical Cold War, the novel serves a useful purpose, although readers who have only encountered James Bond in films will hardly recognize him in the dull bureaucratic role in which he makes his entrance in this volume.

Narrated in the third person, the novel opens at a considerable distance from Bond and England, focusing on the murderous apparatus and personnel of SMERSH, a Soviet agency charged with creating mayhem in the West. The narrator provides an insider’s report on the locations and hierarchical construction of the Soviet spy system—a report that draws on the experience and knowledge Fleming acquired from his own years as an intelligence officer in the Royal Navy during World War II.

The reader gains intimate knowledge of the plot under construction to embarrass the British spy system by drawing 007 into a scandal, including close examinations of an expatriated British citizen now serving as a SMERSH executioner, of the beautiful young woman chosen to bait the trap, and of the evil Rosa Kleb, the mastermind of the operation.

When the novel’s focus shifts to London, Bond is sitting at a desk doing paperwork and serving on tedious committees. The humdrum quality of the day-to-day operations of a government agency—even one so exotic as an espionage branch—becomes apparent. But then Bond’s phone rings with a summons from M, his boss. A breezy exchange with Miss Moneypenny, a visit with Q, and soon Bond is in Istanbul under the care of Darko Kerim, the head of the British secret service in Turkey.

Since readers have acquired the information that Bond seeks as to the nature of the Soviet game he is drawn into, the story builds up tension effectively. The reader sees Bond falling into the trap and is left hoping he can find his way out of it.

The story moves to the Orient Express for the climactic confrontation; Bond whiles away some of his time reading a spy novel by Eric Ambler, a writer contemporary to Ian Fleming. As Kerim, Bond, and Tatiana Romanov, the Soviet bait, hurtle day and night from Istanbul to Paris, the net begins to close and the fatalities begin to multiply. Bond learns key information that will be of use if he can only survive the train trip.

The novel ends with a cliffhanger, so readers who require closure will have to continue on to other volumes in the series.

Bibliography

Chapman, James. Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Price, Thomas J. “The Changing Image of the Soviets in the Bond Saga: From Bond-Villains to ‘Acceptable Role Partners,’” Journal of Popular Culture 26, no. 1 (1992): 17–37.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

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