 | From Russia with Love (Penguin Viking Lit Fiction) by Ian Fleming
Buy used from: £1.50 The extraordinary thing about Fleming is just how readable his books are. He put everything he had into this, fully expecting it to be his last Bond effort. It catapulted Bond into the stratosphere.
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 | Casino Royale (Penguin Viking Lit Fiction) by Ian Fleming
Buy new: £4.68 / Used from: £0.01 A very direct book that has all the Bond elements already in place. Great villain, the best torture scene ever and a great Bond girl who makes a sterling effort to restore Bonds battered manhood.
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 | Moonraker (Penguin Viking Lit Fiction) by Ian Fleming
Buy new: £4.64 / Used from: £0.16 Reads like a detective thriller. Worth it for the fantastically well-described car chase through Kent. Fleming was still finding his way with Bond at this stage and the book is interesting for that.
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 | Goldfinger (Penguin Viking Lit Fiction) by Ian Fleming
Buy used from: £10.49 What a villain and what a henchman. The two of them make this book superbly readable. It even makes golf exciting and I hate golf.
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 | Dr No (Penguin Viking Lit Fiction) by Ian Fleming
Buy new: £4.47 / Used from: £2.23 Fleming's descriptions of Jamaica and the Caribbean are beautifully vivid. And Dr Nos lair is seductively weird. Plus, of course, Honeychile Rider (grandmother of Alex Rider?) in half a bikini.
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 | On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming
Buy new: £5.21 / Used from: £2.09 Bond falls in love with disastrous consequences. Flemings two great passions were the Caribbean and the Alps. The skiing scenes are a master class in descriptive writing & the ending is oddly moving.
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 | For Your Eyes Only (Penguin Viking Lit Fiction) by Ian Fleming
Buy new: £5.49 / Used from: £2.25 Even though some of these are based on ideas for a non-Bond TV action series, they tell us more about Bond than most of the novels. These are interesting vignettes of his life with nice insights.
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 | James Bond: The Man and His World by Henry Chancellor
Buy used from: £2.91 If you want to know more about Fleming and the creation of the Bond books this is hugely interesting and very accessible. Concentrates on the books, with great material from Fleming's own archive.
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 | For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond by Ben Macintyre
Buy used from: £0.01 McIntyre's book (accompanying an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum) is about the relationship between Fleming and his creation, with some great photographs.
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 | Devil May Care (James Bond) by Sebastian Faulks
Buy new: £13.92 / Used from: £0.01 Faulks loving homage to Fleming is a great read, huge fun with some sly winks to recent history. That a writer of his stature should write this book is a testament to just how important Fleming was.
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