Allreaders.com
Author Ian Fleming booklist (click here)

Book Review By James Craver
The Man with the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming

As the thirteenth and final book in Ian Fleming's Bond series begins, James Bond, former agent of Her Majesty's Secret Service, returns to London under mysterious circumstances.
Having last been seen as a presumed-dead amnesiac heading toward the Russian city of Vladivostok in search of his past, Bond now seems to be in possession of all of his faculties. Once he is granted an interview with M., however, he begins to rant about the greatness of communism and attempts to slay his former superior with a stream of liquid cyanide.

Subdued and deprogrammed, Bond seems destined for early-retirement, until M. decides to give him one last mission, one which will either prove his usefulness to the Service or lead to his untimely and rather messy demise.

The target of Bond's mission is to be Francisco "Pistols" Scaramanga, a world-famous assassin known as "the man with the golden gun" for the gold-plated Colt .45 which is his weapon of choice, a man who has already killed five British operatives with practiced ease.

Scouring the Caribbean and Central America, Scaramanga's usual hunting-grounds, Bond finds nothing, until a stroke of luck in Kingston, Jamaica leads him to an unplanned rendezvous with his target.

Posing as a freelance security-expert, Bond is hired by Scaramanga to guard the thug's half-finished Thunderbird Hotel while his employer holds a meeting with his investors.
As Bond eavesdrops on the meeting, he learns that Scaramanga is much more than a simple mercenary and that the members of his investment club are not a group of normal businessmen. They are, instead, members of "the Group," a consortium of American mobsters, Cuban secret-policemen, and Soviet intelligence operatives who engages in drug-smuggling, massive industrial-sabotage, and casino gambling, both legal and otherwise.

Having thus gained knowledge necessary for everything from preventing Cuban-owned sugar plantations from cornering the world market to stopping the sudden, massive influx of ganja into the U.S., Bond must somehow find a way to complete his mission and escape alive.


Plot & Themes
Tone of story - suspenseful (sophisticated fear)
Time/era of story:
Spying/Terrorism Thriller Yes
Cloak & Dagger Plotlets:
Kid or adult book? - Adult or Young Adult Book
descript. of violence and chases - 20 %
Planning/preparing, gather info, debate puzzles/motives - 40 %
Feelings, relationships, character bio/development - 20 %
How society works & physical descript. (people, objects, places) - 20 %
Who's the terrorist enemy here?
Amnesia story? Yes

Main Character
Gender - Male
Profession/status:
Age: - 20's-30's
Ethnicity/Race

Main Adversary
Identity: - Male
Age: - 20's-30's
Profession/status:
Eccentric: Yes
Motive of antagonist - money/treasure
The antagonists are: - foreign organized crime
How sensitive is this character?
Sense of humor - Cynical sense of humor
Intelligence - Smarter than most other characters

Setting
The Americas (not US): Yes
The Americas: - The Caribbean
City? Yes
City: - London
Small town? Yes
Small town people: - nice, like Andy/Opie/Aunt Bee
Misc setting - resort/hotel

Writing Style
Accounts of torture and death? - moderately detailed references to deaths
Explicit sex in book? Yes
What kind of sex: - vague references - descript of kissing - touching of anatomy - use of artificial tools - descript. of breasts
Unusual forms of death - perforation--bullets - exploded into bits
Unusual form of death? Yes
Amount of dialog - significantly more descript than dialog
Back To Main Menu