My first Ian Fleming book. Disappointing that James Bond was pretty much a fool. The Istanbul station head, Kerim, was more intelligent than Bond - how could that be in a James Bond novel? The plot was not too bad, but the Russian "spy" and her reason for the whole story to exist, that was a little unbelievable. The first part of the book introducing the Russian spies and SMERSH was pretty well done, but in Part 2 the story didn't carry over with the same great style. But there was a tense Orient Express train journey, great stuff. And the writing was actually very good, with some great one-liners and paragraph descriptions of scenes and people. Still, overall it was a disappointing introduction to James Bond.