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James Bond (Original Series) #1-3
Casino Royale / Live and Let Die / Moonraker
Introducing James Bond: charming, sophisticated, chillingly ruthless and very deadly. The first three Bond stories have the decadence, violence and thrilling pace that mark all the Bond stories.
528 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
9 people are currently reading
323 people want to read
About the author
Ian Fleming
745 books3,348 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Ian Lancaster Fleming was an English writer, best known for his postwar James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst, and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing.
While working for Britain's Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, Fleming was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye and in the planning and oversight of two intelligence units: 30 Assault Unit and T-Force. He drew from his wartime service and his career as a journalist for much of the background, detail, and depth of his James Bond novels.
Fleming wrote his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, in 1952, at age 44. It was a success, and three print runs were commissioned to meet the demand. Eleven Bond novels and two collections of short stories followed between 1953 and 1966. The novels centre around James Bond, an officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond is also known by his code number, 007, and was a commander in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. The Bond stories rank among the best-selling series of fictional books of all time, having sold over 100 million copies worldwide. Fleming also wrote the children's story Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang and two works of non-fiction. In 2008, The Times ranked Fleming 14th on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Fleming was married to Ann Fleming. She had divorced her husband, the 2nd Viscount Rothermere, because of her affair with the author. Fleming and Ann had a son, Caspar. Fleming was a heavy smoker and drinker for most of his life and succumbed to heart disease in 1964 at the age of 56. Two of his James Bond books were published posthumously; other writers have since produced Bond novels. Fleming's creation has appeared in film twenty-seven times, portrayed by six actors in the official film series.
Ian Lancaster Fleming was an English writer, best known for his postwar James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst, and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing.
While working for Britain's Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, Fleming was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye and in the planning and oversight of two intelligence units: 30 Assault Unit and T-Force. He drew from his wartime service and his career as a journalist for much of the background, detail, and depth of his James Bond novels.
Fleming wrote his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, in 1952, at age 44. It was a success, and three print runs were commissioned to meet the demand. Eleven Bond novels and two collections of short stories followed between 1953 and 1966. The novels centre around James Bond, an officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond is also known by his code number, 007, and was a commander in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. The Bond stories rank among the best-selling series of fictional books of all time, having sold over 100 million copies worldwide. Fleming also wrote the children's story Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang and two works of non-fiction. In 2008, The Times ranked Fleming 14th on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Fleming was married to Ann Fleming. She had divorced her husband, the 2nd Viscount Rothermere, because of her affair with the author. Fleming and Ann had a son, Caspar. Fleming was a heavy smoker and drinker for most of his life and succumbed to heart disease in 1964 at the age of 56. Two of his James Bond books were published posthumously; other writers have since produced Bond novels. Fleming's creation has appeared in film twenty-seven times, portrayed by six actors in the official film series.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
February 23, 2023
How odd it is to go back to the sources inspiring the films and realize how far Broccoli and Co. took the property down the road to light entertainment. Every once in a great while a scene from the novel will snap into the filmed version in my mind, or a character will take on the face of an actor, and then the two will diverge again: the film generally devolving into general silliness and the book generally heading into a moment of serious peril. Of all the film adaptions, Casino Royale comes off best since it was made with the same intent as the novel and the substitution of SPECTRE for SMERSH was credible. Sadly, the other two novels in this collection suffered adaptation during the Roger Moore regime, when the boozy gadget-driven plot formula was at its womanizing peak. Live and Let Die includes an annoying and overtly racist sheriff, Moore's stuntman running to safety across a bridge of fake alligators, and a hook-hand that marks the series' hilariously shoddy approach to prop design, while Moonraker substitutes a Jaws-falling-in-love angle for a coherent plot.
Anyway, back to the books.
One senses that Casino Royale is perhaps the most intentional of Fleming's novels, where he wanted to capture the actual work and life of a spy. Granted, the setup to the centerpiece moment where Le Chiffre and Bond face off over a game of Baccarat is unlikely, but at least it is believable. The remainder of the novel is larded with moments of casual spy craft and a narrative documenting Bond's gradual maturation from a stylish, yet oddly innocent secret agent into a determined and dangerous master assassin.
Live and Let Die on the other hand, well it suffers badly from a lack of ideas. A great deal of the novel involves leveraging 1950s stereotypes and creating false peril. This novel comes as close to the general dumbness of the film series as Fleming's writing gets. The moment of supreme absurdity comes when we are expected to believe that one of Mr. Big Man's henchmen built a trap using an alligator tank under the floor. Is this really a practical burglar alarm? However, despite the kultur-wide background level of poisonous racial depictions, Fleming manages to avoid the absolute grotesques of the film adaptation mostly, even while he builds his story upon the classically racist trope that all Negroes believe and fear ghosts and Voodoo. For all that it uncritically repurposes stereotypes, it's still less offensive than the Looney Tunes I grew up watching. In general, this is not a novel worth the reading unless your goal is to be offended.
The series then turns around and takes off with the novel Moonraker, which despite the rather hilarious premise that Britain takes a lead in the Cold War arms race, has a credible plot. Since this is 2023 and Elon Musk is continually in the news, comparisons to Hugo Drax come easily. Fortunately for us living in this world, Drax is by far the more capable and intelligent. The slow reveal of the plot against England is effective and handled well. Bond actually comes across as an actual human being in this novel, one with a desk job too which was surprising. Also surprising is that for once Bond doesn't get the girl, and that he accepts her refusal with real grace. There are some moments of unbelievability, and the pre-ICBM technology driving the plot feels primitive, yet in all this is a strong mid-century spy thriller that has aged fairly well.
Anyway, back to the books.
One senses that Casino Royale is perhaps the most intentional of Fleming's novels, where he wanted to capture the actual work and life of a spy. Granted, the setup to the centerpiece moment where Le Chiffre and Bond face off over a game of Baccarat is unlikely, but at least it is believable. The remainder of the novel is larded with moments of casual spy craft and a narrative documenting Bond's gradual maturation from a stylish, yet oddly innocent secret agent into a determined and dangerous master assassin.
Live and Let Die on the other hand, well it suffers badly from a lack of ideas. A great deal of the novel involves leveraging 1950s stereotypes and creating false peril. This novel comes as close to the general dumbness of the film series as Fleming's writing gets. The moment of supreme absurdity comes when we are expected to believe that one of Mr. Big Man's henchmen built a trap using an alligator tank under the floor. Is this really a practical burglar alarm? However, despite the kultur-wide background level of poisonous racial depictions, Fleming manages to avoid the absolute grotesques of the film adaptation mostly, even while he builds his story upon the classically racist trope that all Negroes believe and fear ghosts and Voodoo. For all that it uncritically repurposes stereotypes, it's still less offensive than the Looney Tunes I grew up watching. In general, this is not a novel worth the reading unless your goal is to be offended.
The series then turns around and takes off with the novel Moonraker, which despite the rather hilarious premise that Britain takes a lead in the Cold War arms race, has a credible plot. Since this is 2023 and Elon Musk is continually in the news, comparisons to Hugo Drax come easily. Fortunately for us living in this world, Drax is by far the more capable and intelligent. The slow reveal of the plot against England is effective and handled well. Bond actually comes across as an actual human being in this novel, one with a desk job too which was surprising. Also surprising is that for once Bond doesn't get the girl, and that he accepts her refusal with real grace. There are some moments of unbelievability, and the pre-ICBM technology driving the plot feels primitive, yet in all this is a strong mid-century spy thriller that has aged fairly well.
March 1, 2013
An excellent introduction to the western world's most famous spy. Most of the western world knows James Bond only as the womanizing, gadget-happy British secret agent with the impossibly adventurous lifestyle, but if that's all you're expecting to find in these pages, author Fleming explodes your preconceptions with a welcome dose of deliciously insightful melancholy right from the first sentence of the first book: "The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning." He includes plenty of modern-day swashbuckling, objectification of women, and some gadgetry (though not as much as in the movies) through all three novels; but book-Bond is definitely darker than movie-Bond, at least in the tales in this volume. If Bond objectifies and uses women, it's because he has learned that in the end they are traitors: they betray him and the ideals he holds sacrosanct. In fact, the only people Bond really appears to be at all close to throughout the trilogy are his American counterpart Felix Leiter and his boss M. His relationship to M is quite the throwback to days gone by, or perhaps to days that never were in real life. In our modern climate of job dissatisfaction coupled with highly volatile employment, many readers will have trouble relating to the perfect, unspoken trust between manager and employee in the "Moonraker" club sequence.
And lest the reader think that secret agent's life is nothing but glamour, gambling and meaningless sex, Fleming does not shy away from horrific torture scenes -- for example, what must be the ultimate male nightmare in "Casino Royale", and what happens to Leiter in "Live and Let Die." Far better (and safer) to lead a dull, boring life at home reading about uber-spies than actually be one.
A final comment: I have to disagree with the negativity expressed by many Goodreads reviewers about the racism in "Live and Let Die." The whole voodoo angle figured much more prominently in the movie than it does in the book, the word "negro" was at the time just as polite a word as "African American" is today, and Fleming makes a point of explaining to his at the time mostly British readership (i.e., people largely unacquainted with Harlem culture) that "...they're interested in much the same things as everyone else...Thank God they're not genteel about it" -- that last phrase is an obvious slam against polite British society if ever there was one.
And lest the reader think that secret agent's life is nothing but glamour, gambling and meaningless sex, Fleming does not shy away from horrific torture scenes -- for example, what must be the ultimate male nightmare in "Casino Royale", and what happens to Leiter in "Live and Let Die." Far better (and safer) to lead a dull, boring life at home reading about uber-spies than actually be one.
A final comment: I have to disagree with the negativity expressed by many Goodreads reviewers about the racism in "Live and Let Die." The whole voodoo angle figured much more prominently in the movie than it does in the book, the word "negro" was at the time just as polite a word as "African American" is today, and Fleming makes a point of explaining to his at the time mostly British readership (i.e., people largely unacquainted with Harlem culture) that "...they're interested in much the same things as everyone else...Thank God they're not genteel about it" -- that last phrase is an obvious slam against polite British society if ever there was one.
Read
August 24, 2021The first three Bond novels in one edition. I don't have much to add to what has probably been said a million times before. If you have only seen Bond on screen, you will find this a totally different experience, especially in the case of Moonraker. Actually, I tend not to compare the two. I think of them as two separate entities. The Bond of the novels and the Bond of the films.
May 21, 2008
Vivid and Dark,an excellent read.
February 24, 2009
It's Bond alright!
December 25, 2025
I hereby refer only to Moonraker, having reviewed the other two strips reductions indipendently before.
The strip adaptation of Moonraker, illustrated by John McLusky, is a successful example of how a Fleming novel can be transposed into graphic form without betraying its soul. As often happens in serial adaptations, the narrative jumps are sometimes abrupt and some transitions are mechanical or inelegant, especially for those familiar with the original text.
That said, the spirit of Moonraker is fully present: the sense of menace, Bond's cold elegance, the ambiguity of the characters and that unmistakable blend of technology, paranoia and national pride that makes this episode so special in the saga.
McLusky's dry and functional style supports the pace well and renders a credible Bond, less caricatured than in subsequent versions. It is not a substitute for the novel, but accompanies it with intelligence and respect, offering a nostalgic and solid experience for fans.
Recommended especially for those who love the classic incarnations of 007 and want to rediscover Moonraker from a different perspective.
The strip adaptation of Moonraker, illustrated by John McLusky, is a successful example of how a Fleming novel can be transposed into graphic form without betraying its soul. As often happens in serial adaptations, the narrative jumps are sometimes abrupt and some transitions are mechanical or inelegant, especially for those familiar with the original text.
That said, the spirit of Moonraker is fully present: the sense of menace, Bond's cold elegance, the ambiguity of the characters and that unmistakable blend of technology, paranoia and national pride that makes this episode so special in the saga.
McLusky's dry and functional style supports the pace well and renders a credible Bond, less caricatured than in subsequent versions. It is not a substitute for the novel, but accompanies it with intelligence and respect, offering a nostalgic and solid experience for fans.
Recommended especially for those who love the classic incarnations of 007 and want to rediscover Moonraker from a different perspective.
October 19, 2020
Better than the movies.
Casino Royale was really good.
Live and Let Live is kind of racist.
Moonraker was fun. A little dated.
Casino Royale was really good.
Live and Let Live is kind of racist.
Moonraker was fun. A little dated.
June 1, 2022
The plot is a decent one but the awful, casual misogyny that runs through the book is unacceptable.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews