The James Bond Books

These days the films have eclipsed the James Bond books in terms of popularity and it is easy to forget that it all began with Ian Fleming.

Fleming used the experience he gained in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War and his flair with words, honed as a newspaperman, to great effect when he sat down at his winter hideaway in Jamaica started to write a spy novel. The first James Bond book was "Casino Royale" and its success in the United Kingdom paved the way for further adventures featuring James Bond.

Having acquired achievement through this first book, Ian Fleming sat down and created, without fail, a fresh James Bond book every year until he died from a heart attack brought on by heavy smoking and drinking at the early age of 56.

Most of the James Bond novels are straightforward adventure novels, but he did vary from the formula on a couple of occasions. The first was with "For Your Eyes Only", which included five short stories. Although three of them encapsulate an entire James Bond adventure in a few pages, two of the stories are quite different in nature and readers at the time, used to a new full-length novel each year, voiced their disapproval. However, it did permit Fleming to extend his thoughts to some extent to notice what else he was able of producing.

After "For Your Eyes Only", Fleming tried another experiment, this time with "The Spy Who Loved Me". Rather than a traditional James Bond adventure, it was told from the point of view of the Bond girl and James Bond hardly appeared at all.

Even though it proved to be not good enough to book lovers of the time, it does at least present somewhat rather dissimilar from the pen of Ian Fleming and he returned to complete novels - only after his death was "Octopussy & The Living Daylights" made available, another volume of short stories. Of those, "The Living Daylights" is particularly effective as a James Bond adventure, and works extremely well.