James Bond escapes death, solves a mystery, and has some sexy escapades.

I first read this about 43 years ago when I was a 12 year old boy just starting at grammar school. 007. A beautiful Russian agent. Rosa Klebb. Red Grant. Gypsy girls fighting to the death. The Orient Express. A periscope to spy on Russian secret service meetings. Bond's briefcase. The blade in Klebb's shoe. Such iconic moments. What's not to like?

Maybe a bit dated, certainly not politically correct, but a thoroughly entertaining read.

And it brought back some lovely memories of me as a boy lying in bed and being thrilled.

This is hands down the best James Bond book and it was turned into the best James Bond movie. I have yet to read all the books, but I have read a fair amount so I think it is okay for me to have the opinion that this is the best!

I read this twice and loved it both times. The second time I read it was on a train in Switzerland between Bern and Brig. This just so happens to be part of the route of the train included in the climactic scene in the book. This was not an intentional coincidence, but very cool!

If you have wanted to try James Bond, this is a good place to start. You might say “but Matthew, it says right here this is book 5 in the series!” I will say for the person who wants to do the hardcore Bond route, start at the beginning with Casino Royale. But, if you are just feeling casual and not sure you want to commit to the whole series, you can start here. I personally don’t feel like there is enough carry over from book to book for you to miss out by starting in the middle.

I'm not a Bond fan and the only other i've read is Casino Royale. This is better and would have been 4 stars but the buildup is, as is often the case, better than the pay off.

In Casino Royale Bond is shown (unintentionally i'm assuming) to be an incompetent, traitorous, rapist, in this he's a bit more competent although he still manages to ignore a lot of suspicious things.
Bond doesn't think about raping anyone this time but don't worry he has a new BFF who is a confirmed rapist so thats just super.... :| . I'm seriously wondering if any police force has looked into Flemings personal life.

Anyway, due to my aversion to bond i was quite pleased he doesn't make his apperance here until about half-way through. The writing is good and very detailed which, while very occasionally annoying overall adds a lot to the flavour.

As i said things go a little poorer towards the climax especially since we get a lot of time building up a villian who doesn't do much in the end.
I think there's also an error, a lot of effort is put into trying to cover up some gunshots but there was already a gunshot before that which wasn't covered up at all and people should have heard. Maybe i missed something.

Overall, well written... very alive thanks to its detailed nature and some nice twists but not quite 4 stars for me due to exposition dumping.

After two novels bashing the USA as vulgar and crass and corrupt, the Brit Fleming now turns to Russia, in one of Fleming’s literary contributions to the Cold War, with a focus on the Russian anti-spy organization, SMERSH, and a psychopathic serial killer straight out of Fleming's probable reading of Jim Thompson's The Killer in Me. Smersh's mission for no obvious reason than to annoy the CIA is to kill Bond, who is only talked about in the first third of the book. I like that. We get a clearer sense of the shape and nature of the villain in this book, which is a cartoony view of all Russians as cartoonishly cold, merciless, evil, emotionless, and so on. If you are an American reading this book in 1957 you should either 1) run like Hell from the Evil Russkies or 2) Vote for a larger and larger Defense Budget, 3) begin building your bomb shelter, and 4) buy lots of guns.

Now, it is true Russia is the home of Stalin, one of the most murderous totalitarian leaders in history, and it may be true that there may have been upwards of 40,000 SMERSH anti-spy agents killing people both within and without the former Soviet Union, consistent with Stalin’s scorched earth approach to governing resistance, but make no mistake about it, books like Fleming’s helped fuel the Cold War through fear.

Fleming is not John le Carré or Graham Greene, moral philosophers of spy stories; he is writing a fun thriller, cooking his ingredients to lean more and more toward silly pulp territory and away from a noir feel. He also moves us in a more and more sexist direction (to the delight of millions) through the depiction of “irresistible” Tatiana Romanova, who lures 007 to Istanbul in order to seduce him and so her organization can more easily kill him.

Romanova is described as “sexually neutral,” which is to say she will have sex with men but will not get emotionally involved, perfect for spy sex. She is also depicted as a stone-cold killer who has a “perfect body,” of course. We are expected to believe a well- trained SMERSH agent sees Bond, forgets everything she is supposed to do, and actually melts her ice-cold flesh into his arms, of course. But we have seen Bond played by Sean Connery in the film version, so we can see why anyone might sleep with him! We know what he would do with frigid women, make them into fireballs! So we already know how this part of the story is going to work out. (Or we think we do!)

So what do we know about Russia in 1957, based on this book? They are evail soul-less monsters (who have never read Tolstoy or Pushkin), they play chess, they drink vodka, they have spies and counter-spies to match the West. The plot also includes a trip on the Orient Express, which makes you think of the differences between Dame Christie’s elegant bloodless whodunnits vs. these slick, violent action stories. With more sex, for sure (though in 1957, the door closes so we can’t see the sex, of course).

But in spite of everything I say above, I still liked this book pretty well, the best of the lot so far. Once you see it is a wild cartoon that just demonizes the enemy and idolizes the West, you just sit back and enjoy, I guess. I kind of came to like the pulpy/cartoony buildup of SMESH as almost superhumanly bad. I liked how this book began with a different approach, focusing on SMERSH before we introduce Bond. I especially like how Bond walks willingly into the trap he knows is there, and gets out of it, through a series of crosses and double-crosses. Fleming writes action sequences really well. I like Tatiana, so sue me. I do like Bond here, though I have to see the movie again to see which I liked better. I say 3.5. Maybe when I see the film I might kick it up to 4.

This is the fifth of Ian Fleming's Bond novels. It had some really good characters in it - very well formed and deeply motivated baddies Rosa Klebb and Red Grant, but the whole thing didn't work quite as well for me as the previous four stories.
Bond himself felt a little 'washed out', he wasn't firing on all cylinders and seemed almost to be a passenger in the plots and schemes of the other characters. Kerim Bey, the Turkish agent was a very good character and almost the star of the show in this story.
Finally, the 'heroine' Tatiana Romanova - I'm afraid she was very disappointing after the very strong lead women of the previous novels (Tiffany Case, Vespa Lynd). Tatiana did little but get bullied by everyone, cry, and get manipulated easily by her superiors (and Bond). She even asked to be beaten if she started to get fat - what?! No, I'm afraid poor Tatiana was fairly pathetic.
Overall, not a bad tale with some decent action scenes, although almost overshadowed by more than enough disturbing misogynistic rubbish such as gypsy girls being made to fight each other until their clothes fall off - I know it's the 1950s but come on!
So - only 3 stars this time. Hopefully Dr No will be better.

The first part, carefully written, deserves quite a 4minus. The second, after the gipsy episode, is totally different, going to a scarce one. That's what I don't like:
- an escape by train in the plane era, which is quite the same as escaping by chariot
- spies who talk too much, before killing you, and finishing by being killed
- the spektor story, a very thin one
- it is hardly believeable that a blow-up in Istanbul can be on the front page in an Italian newspapaer
- the way Fleming talks about the Balcanic area, all of it dirty, bad-looking and old-fashioned
- Bond's ideea of staying together in the train compartment, AFTER Kerim's death, and in general his poor performance as an educated spy.

So, barely three stars...

A russian conspiracy and the return of Russian spy agency SMERSH bring us to this book. James Bond appears in this book after 3-4 chapters till then it's all Russian planning. After going to USA and complaining about it. Intrigued by the strange business of an agent willing to defect because she has fallen in love with Bond, M discusses the same and sends Bond to Istanbul, Turkey to bring the girl to the fold. What unfolds is again a slow moving adventure despite being only 250 odd pages. But writing was well enough it's just that things don't move much and there is not enough action this time around just lot of love and now it's time to move on to Dr. No.

So while I move on to the next Bond adventure, may be you would want to take your own swipe at Bond and then just Keep on Reading.

People who don't read generally ask me my reasons for reading. Simply put I just love reading and so to that end I have made it my motto to just Keep on Reading. I love to read everything except for Self Help books but even those once in a while. I read almost all the genre but YA, Fantasy, Biographies are the most. My favorite series is, of course, Harry Potter but then there are many more books that I just adore. I have bookcases filled with books which are waiting to be read so can't stay and spend more time in this review, so remember I loved reading this and love reading more, you should also read what you love and then just Keep on Reading.

What I learned from this book (in no particular order):

1.tThe ideal Soviet master assassin is a man who is:

a.tthe offspring of a German wrestler and a Southern Irish hooker;
b.textremely muscular and hairy;
c.tpossessed of a high threshold for pain;
d.tmanic during the full moon; and
e.tasexual (“Sexual neutrality was the essence of coldness in an individual”) --- but love to parade around naked.

2.tUgly women are mannish and have breasts that looked like badly packed sandbags, and when they pull back their hair into a bun, it would be obscene.

3.t“Colonel Klebb of SMERSH was wearing a semi-transparent nightgown in orange crepe de chine. She looked like the oldest and ugliest whore in the world.” Ugly, dumpy, middle-aged, Soviet lesbians are SCARY.

4.t“A purist would have been disapproved of her behind. Its muscles were so hardened with exercise that it had lost the smooth downward feminine sweep, and now, round at the back and flat and hard at the sides, it jutted like a man’s.” Too much exercise could turn a perfect 10 of a woman into a muscular, ugly bitch. Fortunately, the face and breasts would still be pretty, as it is impossible to exercise them too much. She would still be good enough for the hero.

5.tTo impersonate an English secret agent, you must learn to be a gentleman. It is advisable to add a touch of eccentricity, for the English pride themselves on their eccentricity, and treat the eccentric proposition as a challenge.

6.t"Just as, at least in one religion, accidie is the first of the cardinal sins, so boredom, and particularly the incredible circumstance of waking up bored, was the only vice Bond utterly condemned." Bond is a man of many vices, but sloth is the only vice that could actually destroy him.

7.tHaving crushes on men who they know only from photographs is a "grisly" female habit.

8.tIf you are staying at a dingy hotel and are suddenly upgraded to a luxury honeymoon suite with ceiling mirrors ahead of a romantic assignation with a pretty woman, beware.

9.tIf you are manly Turkish man, you have to tame your girlfriend by chaining her naked to your dining table, and then father a dozen children with various members of your harem. When they are grown up, you could have them help out in your spice/espionage business.

10.tIf you are a virile Gypsy man, you could have girls fight to the death naked for you, and then get to keep the winner until her breasts fall off.

11.tIf you are a comparatively enlightened Western man, all you could do is spank your girl when she gets too fat for making love.


The book is sexist and probably racist/imperialist*, but it is also a damn good spy thriller. The action and espionage set pieces --- a nighttime jaunt through a rodent-infested tunnel under the ancient Hall of the Pillars in Istanbul, a sniper fight in the dark alleys by the Bosphorus, a mano-a-mano on the Orient Express -- - are expertly staged and spine-tinglingly exciting. The writing is vivid and crisp, peppered with piquant observations (“Bond recognized them as the eyes of furious dissipation.”) and insights (“Only Track No. 3, and its platform, throbbed with the tragic poetry of departure”). The exotic locales are atmospherically evocative, with just enough authentic details to lend an illusion of plausibility to the fantastic plot. Bond is a master spy, but also a man who gets scared during a turbulent flight, has doubts about the moral fallout of his mission (“What would he think of the dazzling secret agent who was off across the world in a new and most romantic role --- to pimp for England?”), and has genuine tendre for the woman whom he is supposed to seduce. If this is pulp fiction, it is pulp fiction of the highest order.


*I’m not too bothered with the un-PC-ness: Fleming was a product of his age, and he was writing about hard men who lie and kill for their country --- who are surely no boy scouts. The misogyny and brutality that he assigned to them ring true for these characters. Bond himself is not above enjoying the spectacle of a naked Gypsy catfight and has a rather patronizing attitude towards women, but despite all his talk about spanking, never laid a hand on any woman. The rest are so over the top that they’re actually funny.


Other Random Observations

Number of extremely ugly villains: 1

Number of henchmen with congenital analgesia: 1

Number of scenes involving naked people, gratuitous or otherwise: 4

Number of Martini units consumed by the protagonist: 2

Number of times the word “violet” is used as an adjective in the last 8 chapters : 12 (what’s up with that?)

Number of product placement: at least 19
(Sea Island cotton shirt, Dunhill lighter, Girrard-Perregaux watch, Beretta gun, De Bry coffee, Chemex coffee brewer, Tiptree Little Scarlet Strawberry Jam, Cooper’s Vintage Oxford Marmalade, Fortnum’s Norwegian Heather Honey, Minton china, Bentley, Rolls Royce, B.E.A., Swaine and Adeney attaché case, Wilkinsons throwing knife, Palmolive shaving cream, Lambretta scooter, Diplomates cigarettes, Ritz Hotel)

From Russia with Love was the fifth of Ian Fleming's 007 books, published in 1957. Apparently he wasn't sure whether he wanted the franchise to continue, and you have to read the sequel, Dr. No, to find out how some of the plot points in this one were resolved.

Interesting, I think, is that the movie Dr. No (based on the sixth book) was the first James Bond film, and From Russia with Love was the second. Swapping the order of the plots actually necessitated some changes to the stories. In the movie, Dr. No is part of an international crime syndicate, SPECTRE. However, the Russian coding machine (based on the German's WWII Enigma device) was called Spektor in the novel and apparently renamed Lektor in the movie. SPECTRE is nowhere mentioned in either of the novels. In the novel From Russia with Love, it is the Russian assassination bureau SMERSH that hatches the plot to kill Bond using the Spektor and a beautiful woman as bait. In the movie, the planner Kronsteen instead works for SPECTRE, which intends to steal the Lektor along with luring Bond, then kill him and return the machine in return for a big SMERSH ransom payment.

Bond is a somewhat anachronistic character now, a gentleman bad boy back when most heroes played nice. Now they're all bad boys, and worse. And he was an unabashed male chauvinist. I'll leave it for the reader to marvel at rather than explain too much, but Tatiana Romanova is a rake's pipe-dream of a character, like all of the Fleming babes. She lives to serve the fantasy image she's created of Bond in her mind, and she commits the spy's cardinal sin of starting to believe her own cover story.

This book starts very slowly, with much more expository heavy lifting than you'd expect from a spy thriller. The action only accelerates about two-thirds of the way through. Fleming's literary predecessors included Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene, and his slow storytelling pace seems like a throwback.

Also odd, it seemed to me, were his opinions of Istanbul. Fleming hates the Turkish food and finds the city dirty and under-lit at night. Contrast this image with today's Istanbul, which has a population of fifteen million and growing (larger than Los Angeles) and world-class amenities.

[ Cross-posted on www.boychiklit.com ]

Book Review – From Russia with Love – Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming's “From Russia with Love” novel turns out to be one of the most heralded of the Fleming books and films. This book is not the typical James Bond film where Bond is the swaggering, infallible, womanizing spy. Simply put, the book, brings readers closer to the James Bond-style fans are familiar with. Even though still a few years away from the big screen version, Bond is finally developed with the personality that Sean Connery would later refine and make his own in the movies. Interestingly though, in the book, Bond is overshadowed in the story by Ali Karim Bey – the head of the British Secret Service’s ‘Station T’ in Istanbul, Turkey. Bey is the largest personality in the book, and Fleming had a lot of pleasure developing his character. Furthermore, this is the first-time readers get to spend time with the villains without Bond being in the picture. Bond doesn't really get any character time until chapter 11, leaving room for Fleming to show readers how things are done behind closed doors at the international criminal organization – SMERSH, which introduced characters that would later be translated more accurately for the film. The only major difference is that the film has these characters defecting from SMERSH to operate with SPECTRE, another global criminal organization that doesn't appear later in the books until “Thunderball.” It was once kidded that Bond was the worst secret agent ever because everyone knew everything about him. And this may be the book that inadvertently set that stereotype into motion. This time SMERSH is out for vengeance, seeking to murder 007 and his reputation. The plotline is a bit hard to swallow, but the story is told with such enthusiasm, readers won’t care once things are set into motion. That enthusiasm changed everything, and it could have been because Fleming’s character development of the villains made for a better story. He also spent a lot of time on a complex plot that may be one of the most complex plots of the Bond series. It is certainly a realistic Bond narrative and an exciting espionage tale set in the Cold War period. Fleming’s craft was on full display in this novel because he put together a great narrative, with memorable characters, wonderful dialogue, and mixed great interchanges with actionable movement. He also had strong character descriptions, and excellent scene imageries. Fleming’s writing ramped up the suspense throughout the book and he produced a well-varied and well-paced read. I enjoyed the book and although with some minor differences, absolutely loved the movie with Sean Connery as James Bond, 007.

Classic SMERSH/east vs west Bond plot, with an unforgettable setting in and around Istanbul and aboard the Orient Express. I love some of Fleming's insight into Bond's nature, such as

"The blubbery arms of the soft life had Bond around the neck, and they were slowly strangling him. He was a man of war, and when for a long period there was no war, his spirit went into decline."