My least favorite Ian Fleming thus far. The movie was Über-campy but the book was worse. Maybe I'm just spoiled with Chandler, Hammett, Thompson, et al. Anyway, Diamonds are Forever made me want to rethink my whole 'read Ian Fleming from A to Ω' plan. To be fair, it did pick up a little bit towads the end, but it was uneven, with a plodding narrative. Gah!

James Bond X Moana soundtrack is optimal Tube travelling set up

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Connery... shining. May his memory like diamonds linger.

To discover just who is filching British diamonds from an African mine, James Bond is sent undercover along a smuggling pipeline to follow it to the end. With Fleming you always get well-researched background detail rendered with a journalist’s eye, but for me the sojourn in the racing world of Saratoga slowed the story down a furlong or two in less interesting territory.

That said, the pace soon picks up as Bond flees through the desert near Las Vegas with gangster ‘Mr Spang’, nicely described as ‘one of the brutal, theatrical, overblown, dead end adults’, pursuing him on the Cannonball express. That is until crack shot Bond sends him to a thundering end along a rusty branch line with a bullet from his Beretta. There is a tense enough climax too as Bond climbs down the side of The Queen Elizabeth cruise ship hanging on a knotted bed sheet to try to rescue Tiffany Case in a cabin below.

With the film in mind you think immediately of the characters of Bambi and Thumper, who do not appear, and Wint and Kidd, The Spangled Mob’s thugs, who do, and who are, though not with a Bombe Surprise, still dispatched with very effectively.

A very readable crime thriller about ‘hot ice’ that you can take out again, dust off, and let ‘sparkle round your little finger’.

By this reviewer:
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Read in plush Torremolinos hotel foyers I had no right to be in - populated by graceful Spanish waitresses; and beach bars with a mojito or sangria, that were occasionally visited by shady meerkat characters and smiling innocents selling everything from Swiss Rolex watches made in China, to pointlessly absurd flashing plastic cats and dogs, to powerful oval shaped magnets that were evidently made for the soul purpose of parting them with your fingers only to hear them violently rat-a-tat back together in your hand. I was a sucker for the magnets, and every few minutes as I write this, I feel the inexplicable urge to pick them up and feel them constantly clatter together in my palms.

With the constant ring and zing of the insects in my ears, I was in the world of Bond. There was no caviar, lobsters or champagne to be consumed in my budget affair; nor unfortunately an easy, cool and sophisticated smoothness on offer to the ladies. But still, whilst on holiday on the southern coast of Spain, one could create the illusion. For me, the novels of James Bond are the perfect getaway holiday read.

I think Ian Fleming must have taken some of the criticisms of his other books to heart when writing this fourth book, Diamonds Are Forever; especially the absurdities of the previous book’s plot – Moonraker. The story here is straightforward without fantastical elements (no moustachioed German villains being allowed to build a rocket on the white cliffs of Dover, or giant octopuses for that matter). It moves along steadily without the need for cliff-hanger climaxes; Fleming here resists his usual temptation to graphically describe a torture scene; and even takes time to give Bond’s love interest (Tiffany Case) a modicum of back story to explain her character.

The plot is very different from the film; but it’s funny how tiny little things (probably underlined by the screenwriter on reading the book) found their way into the film. It’s also funny how a certain word can linger on a writer’s mind and so find itself being unconsciously used over and over. Here, the word is – sauntered. Never have so many characters sauntered in to, and out of scenes. But I enjoyed my re-reading of this book. Admittedly it may have had something to do with the ambience of my locale adding to the pleasure, because it doesn’t have the major characters or major set-ups of some of the other books, not even an especially strong story (a straightforward smuggling tale), but nevertheless, it is a good, steady thriller, by a writer who’s clearly sharpening his craft with each successive novel.