Product Description

To celebrate the release of the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, all Ian Fleming's short stories are being published in one volume for the first time. From a View to a Kill For Your Eyes Only Quantum of Solace Risico The Hildebrand Rarity Octopussy The Living Daylights The Property of a Lady 007 in New York

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #961 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

About the Author
Born in London in 1908, Ian Fleming worked variously as a banker and journalist before serving in the British Naval Intelligence during World War II. He published his first novel Casino Royale in 1953 and thus started the astoundingly successful James Bond novels and films. Fleming died in 1964.

Customer Reviews

Bond, James Bond
People expecting to read this book and get an idea as to what the new film is about will be disappointed when "Quantum of Solace" is released in November. The only thing the two have in common is the title. However the story is a very good one and I'm sure the film will also be superb.

This book is a collection of the short stories following Bond in "For Your Eyes Only" and "Octopussy and The Living Daylights". The Amazon description is wrong and the tales from "For Your Eyes Only" are "View to a Kill", "For Your Eyes Only", "Quantum of Solace", "Risico" and "The Hildebrand Rarity". From "Octopussy and The Living Daylights" comes "Octopussy", "The Living Daylights", "The Property of a Lady", and "007 in New York".

All very much worth a read and personal favorites include "The Living Daylights" and "For Your Eyes Only", however I don't think they quite live up to Bond's adventures in "Goldfinger" or "The Man With The Golden Gun".

Nevertheless well worth the price and more than enough to keep you entertained whilst reading.

The original complete short stories by Ian Fleming... Modern Classic is a big understatement.
The title is a bit misguided... it has NOTHING to do with the next Bond FILM (which script probably is only slightly inspired by a classic old short story if anything at all...).
BUT... this is a great recompilation of ALL the short Bond stories.
Of course it is better read IN CONTEXT... meaning they were written in the sixties... no cell phones etc.
A magnificent recompilation of the original works.
I must admit (having seen the films) I did not bother with the books for a long time... I was wrong... Fleming knew what he was writing about.
I enjoyed the films of course... but they have distorted somewhat the original novels so to premium the bang/crash/wallop of the film industry (which after all is supossed to know what we like!).

The book is Highly Recommended (of course).

ADB

PS: Car nuts will be glad to know that Bond "personal car" is a Bentley Continental transformed by Mulliner in a two seater with plenty of luggage room... "a bit selfish" (Bond admits!)... And if (as I did) you then read ALL the original novels (five stars stuff... see my reviews if interested) you will learn the ASTON-MARTIN is from "the car pool" and in the beginning of the series Bond owns a "classic" BENTLEY...

Nothing like the film is going to be...
This is a rather strange collection of short stories by Ian Fleming which have been gathered together for the first time here. Some of them barely feature Bond at all and none of those that have been the titles of films bear any resemblance to those films. Many of the stories have appeared before in the collection "For your eyes only" so may be familiar already. It is reported that Fleming used the short story formula as a means of gaining commisions to magazines and based many of the stories on personal experience with many of the characters recognisable friends (or enemies) of the author. Well whether or not that is the case the stories themselves are of varying standard and the title "track" is an interesting one in itself but they appear to be hurried affairs and don't add to Fleming's legacy as I don't believe he was comfortable writing short stories. It has also been said that these stories owe much to the Ashenden series by Somerset-Maugham but for me they don't hold a candle to those ones. So all in all a fair collection but not a patch on the novels.