This one was so well set up! I enjoyed the long lead in (was it 6 or 8 chapters before we even saw Bond?), the perverse and creepy soviet characters, verging on camp the whole way in that sick, inimitable Fleming way. Appreciated that this one was more linear than the previous Bond novels (been reading them in order). Istanbul scenes great, Orient Express cool--but then the solution? C'mon! A deus ex machina so old Woody Allen used to joke about it in his stand-up act in the 1950s. So the novel makes the Soviets look sick, but totally ingenious and Bond rather as an idiot who just lucks out in the end--and then is outsmarted a second time and killed in the postscript scene. Surely Fleming will explain that one away in the opening scene of the next opus like the old serial cliffhangers of the 1930s and '40s--the same serials that are easily the lowest form of art produced in the Western World (yes, I find pornography far more advanced) and the inspiration for all that Star Wars and Raiders of the Penultimate Covenant shit. Sigh. Almost.