It's not a matter of much argument that the James Bond franchise has built itself on casual sexism (selling the idea of well-bred hypermasculinity alongside a very dated idea of femininity as passive and strictly sexual), but the plot of From Russia With Love in particular is premised on the idea that women are prone to doing shockingly stupid things, especially in matters of 'love'. Why else would a Soviet conspiracy to defame a top dog British secret agent; and to thereby bring scandalous shame to the West in general; be built on the idea of a naïve Russian cyper clerk falling in love with a file photograph of Bond? In fact, when M. and Bond become aware of this woman and her proposal (to deliver to them the immensely valuable Soviet tech of the Spektor in return for being allowed to go with Bond to England), they almost dismiss the idea of it being a trap based on how likely such a silly womanly 'crush' could be.

Anyway. SMERSH, the Soviet counterintelligence agency headed by the toad-like Rosa Klebb (who reminds me of JK Rowling's Umbridge to no end), decides to bait Bond — decidedly the 'best' British spy — with the cypher clerk (Corporal) Tatiana Romanova's feminine charms and the militarily-important offer of the Spektor; to cause a scandal about the British Secret Services that would pull attention away from the Soviet's own recent blunderous infamy. And since this novel is written in the freshly post-colonial Cold War context where sensibilities were yet to be developed at all, the plot involves Istanbul, whose Oriental curiosities are employed to the maximum in the book in order to entertain western readers.

In Istanbul, Turkey; Bond meets Kerim Bey, who works with the British services and is quite a big man in his own country. Kerim becomes 007's friend, aide, and his window to all forms of Oriental debauchery: think, for example, a business empire run by a hoard of sons; borne of intercourse with many a woman chained, no less; or a fight-to-death between two gypsy women (over a man they both 'love'!) where clothes are torn off and bodies displayed. Bond, of course, is a proponent of benevolent sexism, for he stops the women from getting killed and also refuses to have sex with them. In fact, even with Tatiana, he only talks of spanking in the event she spoke against him or got too fat!

Tatiana, as per SMERSH's orders (and some strange, 'womanly' ailment) falls in love with Bond and seduces him in a hotel's honeymoon suite where; unbeknownst to either of the people in bed; Soviet agents are filming them for defamatory purposes. The couple then takes off with the Spektor in a train (the Oriental Express!) where they make love, and where a lot of action happens and Kerim is killed (because despite being admirable, he is half a Turk!). When Bond feels he is in trouble and calls for backup, he is met with Captain Nash: ostensibly sent by M, but; as we later find out; really the soviet-employed, sexless, hysterical hitman called Donovan Grant (or Red Granitsky, after his defection from Britain to USSR) who only kills around the full moon (fun!).

Grant and Bond battle it out while Tatiana; the passive Bond girl; is passed out cold because of the spikes drink administered to her by Nash. Here, Bond is explained in a veritable monologue by the villain (WHY do they do that?) the Soviet conspiracy, and how the Spektor is also a bait fitted with a bomb. But of course, Bond kills Grant and escapes to take the latter's place in a meeting with Rosa Klebb at the Ritz. The end-all of it is that they fight and Klebb dies, but not before Bond, too, is injected with a deadly poison that should kill him in a matter of seconds.

Way after the book ends, it leaves one with a lot to talk about.

The idea of gender and sexuality, for instance. It's undeniable that Fleming was a product of his time, but From Russia With Love paints for us a nice little picture of the ideals of sexuality in that time: all men must be like Bond: hypermasculine and a womaniser; while all women must not be like Tatiana (willing to sell their bodies to the state), except in the matter of giving their bodies to the perfect man. There is also something decidedly Shakespearean about how neither the woman nor Bond know the full extent of the plots that employ them. That deviant sexuality was seen as evil in this time is also illustrated well enough through the scene with Rosa Klebb, dressed in an orange silk negligee, trying to exploit an unassuming, 'guileless' Corporal Tatiana.

This book — and I assume it is so with all other Bond novels, too — holds true our notion of the Cold-war era fascinating with armament, as it devotes longish sections to fascinating military and spy technology: the most unforgettable example has to be the 'suitcase' created for Bond by the Q Branch. In fact, the bait that interests M (and even Bond, although he is also roped in by the woman aspect of it) revolves around the Spektor, a Soviet cryptographic device (i.e. military tech!). This Cold War hunger is rather disgusting to me from the distance of the many decades that it has been since then.

All that being said, From Russia With Love is a fairly good spy thriller (especially when one keeps in mind how the genre mandates sexism and sentiments of war-mongering paraded as the thrill of saving national pride). From literary aspects, too, the novel is unique: The first third of it is from the perspective of the Soviet conspirators, and we only meet Bond — bored from the lack of a mission and abandoned by his previous woman — halfway through the book. Too bad that it's just so misogynistic that every woman character has to either be evil or a pawn for male use.
However, the book is still wonderful compared to the movie (which is one of the better James Bond movies at that). While it is well-made, the cinematic plane just exaggerates everything unlikeable (misogynistic) about Bond. The additional plot of Klebb working for the private intelligence organisation S.P.E.C.T.R.E. instead of the Russians was quite charming, too, in that it made the James Bond universe slightly apolitical (perhaps a good thing in it's contemporary tension-ridden global context?)

From Russia With Love is a good novel (and movie) when one weighs it strictly as part of the inherently problematic James Bond universe. Assessed independent of that, it is just a gimmicky, dated mess that could only be read for critical purposes and the like.

(A-) 83% | Very Good
Notes: James Bond fights the 'soft life' but ironically becomes soft: ditching sense to reattain love, adventure and friendship.

Though Bond is used to finding women and trouble on the job, perhaps this is the first time they found him first. How in the world will he survive this one?


As much as I love James Bond, the novels were beginning to become slightly monotonous. Not so much that I'd stop reading per say, but I was certainly starting to read this series with less enthusiasm. This installment was like a breath of fresh air!

Bond seems more human in this story. He makes some mistakes, including some that I felt could have been avoided with some basic inferential senses. I know that Bond is famous because of his flawless ability to get the job done, but it's kind of nice to have a reminder that even the best are human and make mistakes as well.

I also liked the insight of the U.S.S.R. government that the opening gives the reader. You get to step into the shoes of the bad guys in this book and really take in both sides of the story. It was a great addition as well to be able to watch the plot be taken to Bond by surprise, rather than happen during a standard mission given to Bond by M.

Overall, a great addition to the series, and one of my favorites. Stay tuned for more 007 reviews in the future!

Solid, sensational, superbly written work from Ian Fleming, as perfectly calibrated and electrifying as "Dr. No" - so far my favourite of the few Bond books that I have read. Perhaps this is even one better? Let's find out.

It should be noted here that while almost all other James Bond novels have been primarily exciting action-packed thrillers and less of exciting spy novels, "From Russia, With Love", I think, is the only novel from the series that is actually a spy novel first and then an action-packed thriller. There is no evil megalomaniac to be defeated here, there is no diabolical or apocalyptic conspiracy to be thwarted, there are no rockets, nuclear missiles, gardens of death or gold depositories involved here; instead, Fleming has built a superbly cinematic potboiler around a basic template of an espionage novel.

James Bond is on a mission to help defect a beautiful Russian woman named Tatiana Romanova from behind enemy lines in Istanbul to the safety of the West in London, since, well, since she has fallen in love with him. Or that is how the story goes. And along with her, Bond also has a chance to pocket the latest Spektor encoding machine that the Russians are using - almost a perfect dowry to go along with the romantic union of these two spies from the East and the West. But he does not seem to know that it might all be a conspiracy. Or is it? Or does he know already? I mean, this is James Bond we are talking about.

Well, I leave you to find out the answer. But for more than one reason, "From Russia, With Love" is a radically different James Bond novel and for good. Fleming spends about a sizable part of the first half of the novel in fleshing out, not his hero or the background to his new mission, but instead - and this is what first gripped me more convincingly - the "villains" of the story. And while a lesser thriller writer would have been content to portray SMERSH, the organisation of Soviet Intelligence dedicated to assassination, torture and deception, as a mere gaggle of incompetent caricatures, Fleming deserves extra credit for portraying them not only as shrewdly intelligent and determined but also cool-headed, technologically superior and also an intelligence outfit that has done its research well enough to know their intended target and his vices so as to lay out the perfect plan to reduce him to death and disgrace.

It is at this point that I became aware of something further different - this is the first time that we see Fleming critically examining the strength and integrity of British intelligence with a discerning eye. Bond, M and the whole of MI6 falls easily to believe in Tatiana, eager to impress the Americans, without considering the possibility of a greater game afoot and as the dominoes start falling one by one, Bond has to rely on his own instinct, initiative and even support from networks in Istanbul and elsewhere to guard him and his quarry on the way back from the cold. At one point, Bond, so far always the bullet-headed soldier of Her Majesty, laments his own country as one where there are only carrots and no sticks, commenting that they have no more teeth, only gums. This self-critical dimension in this novel thickens it admirably and proves that Fleming had really the potential to approach the profound introspection and dry wit of Graham Greene and John Le Carre on his own.

But we read James Bond primarily for the pulpy thrills and spills and Fleming serves them up expertly, with the finesse of Buchan and Ambler and also with the lean, cold-blooded grit that is his own signature style. There is not much action in "From Russia, With Love"- it flows in fits and starts but the excitement and suspense and the sense of constant danger and menace thunders like the Orient Express in the last fifty pages. Even for one who has watched the film adaptation countless number of times, just like me, this is just extraordinary thriller writing of a whole new level, both tight and mesmerising in turns. There are many patches of superb, almost mesmeric and stirring prose that Fleming offers us and there are also equally many taut and suspenseful moments that remind us that we are here to enjoy the exhilarating and dangerous ride that he takes us through.

The girl herself, Tatiana Romanova is quite a welcome break from the usual Bond damsel in distress - in a few notable ways. She is demure to begin with but as the novel progresses, especially in the latter half, she has her own motives and layers and Fleming reveals them slowly and leisurely without entirely buttoning her down. In the end, though, he carves out Bond as a refreshingly chivalrous hero, something that the hard-nosed and unreasonable haters of this thriller seem to have missed out on. He is wholly admirable throughout the book, especially towards the end, and becomes a Buchanite hero worth rooting for.

One more character deserves some special mention here - I am not mentioning the villains of this thriller because they deserve to be discovered and encountered on their own and Fleming does not disappoint in that respect. This man is Kerim Bey, our man in Istanbul, who comes across as more of a charming, raffish, even flawed around the edges but more or less admirable spy out of Greene's novels rather than Fleming's usual penchant for tightly wound allies like Tanaka and Felix Leiter. He is proud about his half-gypsy ancestry, he is unabashedly rough and even unlikable on a first glance but beneath that regressive surface, he reserves unexpected depths of loyalty to the intelligence service he works for and also a deeper understanding of the realities of the game of espionage than even Bond himself.

Thrilling, suspenseful, well-characterized, atmospheric and, most importantly, concluding with a breathless confrontation which is not the one that you are expecting, "From Russia, With Love" is indeed seductive as its title suggests. You will fall in love with it, even as you know that it is going to tear your nerves apart.

This really needs to be remade. To help move things along, I've mocked up a poster and a few seconds of dialogue for the teaser trailer...

From Russia With Love by Ian Fleming adapted for the BBC

Another version of this note and thoughts on other books are available at:

- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...


-tIsn’t the title fabulous?
-tAnd yet such a preposterous proposition

I mean, coming from Russia it can’t with love.
This is my view, based on the many years during which all we’ve got around here was communism and the heinous regime…

-tNo love from that part of the world…

Jocularity aside, think of Aleppo and Sergei Magnitsky, as two more recent examples of the kind of affection coming from Russia…

-thttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_...

Or if you think these just random mistakes, or you come up with the argument that I tend to hear at the sauna- the Americans do the same or sometimes even worse- the Americans are always behind it-remember Alexander Litvinenko and the polonium they used on him.

Having said that, I must emphasis that I had five borzoi and dozens of puppies from them and I am an admirer of Russian writers:

-tChekhov, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky…with Tolstoy there is a more complex situation where I loved War and Peace, Ana Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilich and the short stories but have learned horrifying things about the Lev Nikolayevich.

Coming finally to the point, I am no fan of the Soviet Union- that is established- but I generally avoid detective, spy novels as well.

So From Russia With Love could not have been a favorite of mine and I came to the subject with a biased outlook.
And to add another layer of mistrust and skepticism, I am particularly unfavorable towards James Bond.

007 is a charming, attractive, seducing, flamboyant, intelligent, athletically built, martini fan, with a good sense of humor man.
But therein lays the trouble.

No secret agent in the world could be like that.
The job description for secret agents contradicts most of the qualities and skills on display in a James Bond account.

The men working for MI6, the CIA and any other respectable agency of that kind have to be ordinary looking, blend in a crowd and attract no attention.
This is the exact opposite of what 007 does.

But let us call it artistic license.
Which does not prevent me from getting impatient when I read about how he seduces one woman after another, while drinking martinis, smoking cigarettes- at least in the days when Fleming wrote the series- and killing multitudes of opponents.

Yes there is pleasure in watching a glamorous film with Aston Martins chasing Alfa Romeos- or the other way around, especially since I own an Alfa Romeo 159, a car worthy of an art museum- but it is farfetched.

In this installment, the Soviets cook up a plot where a woman called Tatiana falls in love with the…photo of James Bond and then decides to find him and offer him a prized secret and the machine that is so sought after, while the KGB just baits their enemy into a trap and gives a coup de grace…
Even James Bond’s superior says some think like:

-tIt is such an incredible proposition, it might just be true

But if you ask me, I think that to believe that a girl just fell in love with a photo of the most famous British spy, she is working for the KGB- which is supposedly screening again and again for the toughest people around – and she decides to give herself to this James Bond, together with invaluable material seems much more than naïve to me.

On the other hand, I have just found that Ian Fleming thought this would be the last of the Bond narratives and there is at least one major surprise in store.

I feel guilty reading these books for a variety of reasons. One, they are sinfully good. Two, they are undeniably racist and sexist. Three, I think I'm reading a first edition (the real owner of these books stole/borrowed them from a distant relative) and they are disintegrating in my hands as I read them. Every time I turn the page it comes away from the binding. Is it sacrilege to destroy a 1st edition Bond book?

The most surprising thing about these books is Fleming's prose. His descriptions evoke a wonderful sense of place and character as you read. Lines such as "...Bond recognized them as the eyes of furious dissipation" and "...pale, thick chicken's skin that scragged in little folds under the eyes" were some of my favorites. Or perhaps, "The tricoteuse of the French Revolution must have had faces like hers, decided Kronsteen."

I was disappointed with the end however, and I thought that Fleming's portrayal of the female spy was not believable. I think he does better with the femme fatal characters rather than puppy love. Must read more.

Rating: 4.5* of five

It's the 1963 movie with Sean Connery that I'm rating. I tried reading Casino Royale recently, and found it dated and even more sexist and racist than I was expecting. I'll stick to the movies. Connery's nice to look at. The gadgets are hilarious, and so is Q. The theme songs are great.

James Bond is fucking stupid. I don't mean the character. I mean the whole damn series. Years ago I read the first Bond book and thought, wow, this is some racist trash, and I didn't want to read any more, but I thought recently that I'd have to if I wanted to work my way through a list of best mysteries. So they had one Bond book on at least two different lists and this is the only one, so it's supposed to be the cream of the crop, yeah?

Only it's half a book of hand-rubbing Soviet bureaucrats, technocrats, and sadists plotting to bring down James Bond for no particular reason other than they want to have a success to put up on the tote board. Then they send their very best, most vicious, most sadistic killer in for the kill.

This "kill" scene happens at the very end of the book, so there is virtually no action or intrigue except for two gypsy women fighting for the death to marry a gypsy man (but really just so the two can catfight their way out of their clothes and naked and glistening with sweat writhe around biting, clawing, etc., boobs a flopping and whatnot) and then the gypsy camp is raided and there are some gunshots and some minor fisticuffs.

But I digress. The kill scene is plain dumb. The Soviet's very best hired gun is fooled by a simple trick before being killed and oh no big spoiler, the good guys win... OR DO THEY??? because Fleming throws in a last page twist that ends on a cliffhanger, but who the hell cares because he writes for shit and plots for shit and these books are dated ass trash.

Now, the movies are a different thing altogether and that's a discussion for another day, but the books I have reconfirmed, choosing the pinnacle title, are just godawful writing with godawful characterizations and Bond is simply an uninspring zero.

From the Telegraph's Andrew Martin 06 Aug 2014:

"Scientists at the University of London have concluded that the key to happiness is having low expectations. 'They mined this conclusion from an experiment in which people gambled with small sums of money. The subjects were happiest when they won, not having expected to win.'"



This quote pretty much captures my feelings about Ian Fleming. Now five books deep into James Bond, I've just figured out how to enjoy these books. Yes, you guessed it. Low expectations. I can't pretend I'm going to be reading Graham Greene or Joseph Conrad. I'm not going to explore the soul of man or the heart of darkness. I'm also not going to be reading John le Carré. There isn't going to be any self-reflection of post-modern hand wringing. This is James Bond dammit. You are going to get James Bond. He is a known quantity. If you come to this expecting to be seduced by literature, oh boy, you are on the wrong damn train. If, however, you are looking for 00 so ‘tarnished with years of treachery and ruthlessness and fear,’ sent off ‘to pimp for England’... Well, babe, this is THAT novel and James is your man.



It all reminds me of a quote from Christopher Hitchens I recently read:

“Fleming once confessed that he hoped to “take the story along so fast that nobody would notice the idiosyncrasies.” Fat chance. His “idiosyncrasies” jut out like Tatiana Romanova’s ass. What he ought to have said was that he hoped to pile on the pace and thereby hustle the reader past the point where belief has to be suspended. The smaller details, of products and appurtenances and accessories, fulfill the function of the conjuror’s other hand. They distract attention from the glaring lacunae in the plots, the amazing stupidity of the supposedly mastermind villains, and the reckless disregard for his own safety that this supposedly ice-cold agent displays by falling for every lure.”

Oh, James!

James Bond is lured into thinking that a beautiful Russian agent, Tatiana Romanova, loves him and wants to defect with a code machine, but she's a trap set by SMERSH. Red Grant, the USSR's top executioner, is on a collision course to meet and kill Bond on the Orient Express. Bond kills Grant but appears to succumb to poison in the final moments, delivering a killer cliffhanger that doesn't exist in the movie.

Yet another great spy thriller by Ian Fleming, whose writing style and mastery of the tradecraft of the period constantly impresses me. It was the 1950's, so yes, Fleming writes women as you would expect someone writing a macho novel of the time would. But overlooking that instead of viewing it as though it were written today, the characters are detailed and interesting, the action is excellent, and the book delivers a deeper story than the movie (which I've seen about ten times).

Clearly many of the other reviewers are incarcerated in monasteries and convents and bit out of touch. I think you haven’t really lived until you have kidnapped the object of your passing fancy and broken them to your will by chaining them naked under your kitchen table (and it is soooo lame when your mom catches you and sets her free).

I have been binging Bond novels and while I wouldn’t say they are great, they are fun. From Russia with love is packed with some hilarious misogyny and cultural imperialism. It is not my favorite Bond novel. I think the premise of Russia trying to honey-pot James Bond is great and that the supporting characters are an amusing side-show, but the man himself comes off as a little silly.