After receiving his mission briefing James Bond asks Bill Tanner, the Chief of Staff for the British Secret Service, why M is so worried about the case he has just been assigned.

Having received some criticism for setting Moonraker on home soil – what readers wanted was to escape the grey skies of England – Ian Fleming set his fourth James Bond book, Diamonds Are Forever (1956), in America once more.

007\’s task is to investigate a diamond smuggling pipeline responsible for running diamonds from South Africa to the United States. Assuming the role of Peter Franks, a courier who has just been picked up by the police, he is to infiltrate the operation and find out who is behind it.

When Tanner tells him that M is worried about the American gangs he\’s likely to have to deal with Bond dismisses them as \”a lot of Italian bums with monogrammed shirts who spend the day eating spaghetti and meat-balls and squirting scent over themselves\”.

Introduced to Tiffany Case, the next link in the chain, Bond smuggles the stones inside golf balls, something Fleming had picked up while in Naval Intelligence; the set of balls in question were designed to smuggle escape materials to British servicemen in German POW camps during the Second World War.

Having made his delivery, Bond is told to go to Saratoga Springs, where he should bet on a particular horse – Shy Smile – in a fixed race. Before departing he bumps into his old friend Felix Leiter. The last time he\’d seen him was after having been thrown to a shark and he now had an artificial leg and a hook in place of his missing hand.

Leiter has joined Pinkerton\’s detective agency after being invalided out of the CIA and quite by coincidence is investigating Shy Smile. He tells Bond that the horse he\’ll be betting on is not in fact Shy Smile, but another horse altogether and deciding to join forces and travel to Saratoga Springs together Leiter takes Bond for martinis and lunch at Sardi\’s. Bond also has time to take Tiffany to dinner at the 21 Club, so once again we get a good glimpse of New York as it was in the mid-1950s.

Leiter picks up Bond in his \”Studillac\”, a a Studebaker with a Cadillac engine. Fleming had come across such a car while visiting the United States and while he himself loved American cars, one of his in-jokes is that Bond is usually critical of them, although in the case of the Studillac Leiter was able to impress him and the resulting road trip provided more local colour to satisfy those British readers who had complained to Fleming about his previous book.

When they get to Saratoga Springs Shy Smile doesn\’t come in as planned thanks to Leiter\’s intervention – he bribes the jockey and hence Bond doesn\’t receive his payment. However, he does witness the way in which the Spangled Mob deals with those who cross it.

Having not received his payoff, is told to go to Las Vegas, where he should \”win\” his payment; this time it goes as planned. However, when suspicions arise, James Bond is taken to Spectreville, a privately owned ghost town with its own private railway where 007 is taken to meet his end.

Although Diamonds Are Forever isn\’t the best of the books it does have some memorable scenes but the reader ends the book feeling it rather lacks something.

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Category: Writing
Keywords: Diamonds Are Forever, Ian Fleming, James Bond books, James Bond