LIVE AND LET DIE was the second Bond book but the first to be banned (by the Republic of Ireland), which naturally led to higher sales. M, whose cold, shrewd gray eyes are often referred to throughout the series, begins his briefing by pulling out a number of gold coins, including a Rose Noble of Edward IV. The book, Live and Let Die includes scenes and references that you will know from the films Dr No, Live and Let Die, and License to Kill. Sales were successful enough that his publishers, Jonathan Cape, offered Fleming a contract for three further Bond novels. Bond is interrogated by Mr Big, who uses his fortune-telling employee, Solitaire (so named because she excludes men from her life), to determine if Bond is telling the truth.

After recently reading and reviewing Casino Royale, I continue my James Bond Challenge with Live and Let Die, the second Bond novel written by Ian Fleming, in 1954. Neat contemporary gift inscription to flyleaf, gilt on covers tarnished, some abrasion to top edge of rear panel; jacket otherwise bright and fresh. Bound in black cloth covered hard boards, gilt to spine and gilt emblem to the upper board; in the original Kenneth Lewis designed dust jacket, un-clipped (10s 6d net) which has the jacket designer's credit printed to the front flap 4mm below the blurb. Eco considers that this is "not just an example of macabre sarcasm; it is an emphasis on the essential by the inessential, typical of the école du regard. My only complaint was that the Sensitivity reader (an individual of a remarkably high creativity) does not go far enough.Fleming’s customary bit of awkward sexual prose is apparent as Bond and Solitaire quickly fall for each other, thus disproving the theory behind her nickname.

In this case, Fleming drew on the history of Sir Henry “Bloody” Morgan, governor of Jamaica from 1675 until his death in 1688. I’m still wondering if he was particularly racist himself, or if just some his characters were, and/or if he was just using commonplace language used in those un-woke times. Casino Royale was released on 13 April 1953 in the UK as a hardback edition by publishers Jonathan Cape. In the novel, America was the Soviet objective and Bond comments "that New York 'must be the fattest atomic-bomb target on the whole face of the world'. Publisher's indigo blue hardcovers stamped in gilt, decorated with author's initials in gilt to cover, plain black endpapers.

A thousand coins from Bloody Morgan’s treasure have popped up in America, being sold and traded by “negroes”. I was thinking during the whole book that it was very open minded of Fleming to have Bond have a romantic relationship with a black woman in only his second book, and in the 1950s. Why couldn’t it be contrived that Bond, Big and Solitaire end their differences in a peaceful, socially acceptable way?

Following a comic strip adaptation in 1958–59 by John McLusky in the Daily Express, the novel was adapted in 1973 as the eighth film in the Eon Productions Bond series and the first to star Roger Moore as Bond. Gilbert A2a Black cloth covered boards with some bowing, slight discoloring to gilt on lower half of Jonathan Cape logo on spine; faint pink stain to part of bottom and side edge; toning and some rubbing around edges, in colorful dust jacket with a coin-sized stain to the inside of the back flap.

According to John Griswold, these later entries retroactively place the events of Live and Let Die in (most likely) 1952, shortly after the events of Casino Royale. Bond becomes involved in the US through Mr Big's smuggling of 17th-century gold coins from British territories in the Caribbean. Perhaps though, it must also be consider a historical document a snap shot of a time, portrayed in popular fiction, showing how things have changed, from not just the story but in the way the story is told, down to the diction and attitude. They were animal eyes, not human, and they seemed to blaze … Bond knew from the records that he was six and a half foot tall and weighed twenty stone [280 lbs], and that little of it was fat. Live and Let Die was published in the US in January 1955 by Macmillan; there was only one major change in the book, which was that the title of the fifth chapter was changed from "Nigger Heaven" to "Seventh Avenue".