FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1957)
"Mr Fleming is in a class by himself... immense detail, elaborate settings and continually mounting tension, flavoured with sex, brutality and sudden death" Daily Mail
"Adds the pleasures of a credible plot to the excitement of extreme violence. Highly polished, irresistible" Sunday Times
"SMERSH is the Soviet organ of vengeance - of interrogation, torture and death - and James Bond is dedicated to the destruction of its agents wherever he finds them.
But, in its turn, the cold eye of SMERSH focuses on James Bond and far away in Moscow a trap is laid for him - a death trap with an enticing lure.
Ian Fleming takes us into the headquarters of SMERSH. We watch Bond's assassination being minutely devised. We meet the executioner. We sit in at the planning. We inspect the lure.
Then the lever is pulled in Moscow, and in London, Istanbul and Paris the wheels begin to turn.
Ian Fleming's other Secret Service thrillers - Casino Royale, Live and Let Die, Moonraker, Diamonds are Forever - may have made your pulse race.
Be careful of From Russia With Love. Weak nerves will be shredded by it." Plot Summary from the original jacket copy of the Jonathan Cape edition
"Every major foreign government has a file on James Bond, British secret agent. Now, Russia's deadly SMERSH organisation has targeted him for elimination - they have the perfect bait in the irresistible Tatiana Romanova. Her mission is to lure Bond to Istanbul and seduce him while her superiors handle the rest. But when Bond walks willingly into the trap, a game of cross and double-cross ensues - with Bond both the stakes and the prize."Plot Summary from the current Penguin edition