Bond takes on the American mob in an attempt to bust a diamond smuggling ring. Good action and lots of keenly detailed observations on American life in the mid-50s. The movie, on the other hand, is easily the worst to feature Connery and one of the worst ever in the series. All the campiness of the Moore years gets its first run here, with a ridiculous attempt to graft Blofeld into a slideshow of key moments from the book. Fine book, atrocious movie.

This is the first Fleming novel to really impress me. Great thriller story, pretty fun 1950's America. The only negative I would say is that while Bond definitely fell for Tiffany Case in the end, there was no resolution to that thread. Hell, he even mentioned wanting to marry her. But then she just leaves when he writes his report. Weird.

And so we reach number four in the Bond series, and this one lacks the punch of it's predecessors.
For the uninitiated, Bond is asked to infiltrate an American gang who are smuggling diamonds out of a mine in Africa and selling them through their very legit high-end retailers.
So far so good.
Unfortunately, Flemming struggles to hold the reader's attention, and when he decides to bring in horse racing (and the fixing thereof), the story starts to feel a little stretched and thin.
There is also a problem with some of the lead characters being very poorly drawn, leaving you with only a cursory notion of who they really are. And his use of good fortune and coincidence to drive the story along is borderline unforgivable.
But, despite all that is wrong with this book, it's still fun.
He is developing Bond's character more and more, allowing our hero to fall in love and show that he can be affected by all the death and killing that we've come to associate him with. In fact, one could almost go as far as to say Bond shows just how human he can be in Diamonds.
Not least with his relationship with 'M'.
Flemming also shows how he was able to rock the establishment back when his books were first published. While the actual 'sex' scene is remarkably chastened by today's standards, the scene where Bond first goes to Tiffany Case's room is rich with erotic tension.
If you'll pardon the expresion, when Flemming nails it he nails it.
There are, of course, areas of the writing that are now showing its age. The fact a Jewish girl opens the door at the Diamond house seems an unnecessary interjection in this day and age, yet I suspect it barely raised an eyebrow back in 1956.
Similarly, there are phrases and expressions used by Bond that went out of fashion long before the silver screen came a-calling.
One can only hope From Russia With Love is more of a retur to form.
Right, lets go and see what kind of mess the film was...

Tiffany Case is probably my favorite Bond Girl so far, but overall I found the story to be pretty boring, though I liked the bookended start/finish. Also, as with Live and Let Die, Fleming's depiction of Black Americans is just...a total bummer, and in this book it felt....kinda out of pocket with an unnecessary monologue!

Audiobook gripe: kind of hated the volume differentials between Lewis' voices, one minute he's doing his super soft RP accent and then the next second he's YELLING in Brooklyn-ese. Felt like the mixing could have been better!

It's the least engaging of the books so far. Lacks a sense of threat and danger and a feeling that this mission is a substantial one, to which Bond himself alludes. Feels strange when your central character is basically saying this mission isn't as hard or important as my other ones, and Fleming doesn't really manage to turn that feeling around within the story. The villains aren't engaging and the set pieces not that exciting. I'm not sure that Bond works that well tonally in America. It excels in exotic, mysterious, or cool and sophisticated places. Whereas the worlds of Las Vegas and Saratoga Springs aren't quite that.
As always though, some lovely moments and invocation of place, and Tiffany Case was a nice feisty character, but not one I'm going to remember deeply.

Not the best Bond. I didn't really get who the villains were or what the threat ever was, but Felix Leiter is great. I wish he had been as big a part of the movies as he is in the books.

Way better than the movie on this one.

Apart from a few moments where Bond has some very racist thoughts and comments. (Fleming was of a generation that had intolerable and outdated beliefs)
It's a decent story, fast paced and plenty of action. Bond is as you expect, a womanising, quick thinking man of acton.