This is a good one, with a minimum of the clangingly awkward references (e.g. “negress”) that characterized the earlier books. Still, it was written in 1956 and it shows. The New York mob crew Bond must contend with is called the Spangled Gang, which sounds to contemporary ears like the Wet and later Sticky Bandits from the Home Alone movies. Speaking of movies, this is the novel that introduces Kidd and Wint, the two idiosyncratic assassins who were so memorably portrayed in the movie, referring to each other on film by the titles “Mister.” Damien Lewis’s narration of the audiobook shows admirable commitment, utilizing a wide and entertaining range of character voices, and doing a pretty good (though occasionally inconsistent) job of switching from his very British accent to a number of American dialects.