The Spy Who Loved Me

Fleming, Ian

ISBN 10: 0141802987 ISBN 13: 9780141802985

Publisher: Penguin, 2002

Synopsis

In an attempt to escape her tangled past, Vivienne Michel has run away to the American backwoods and is in grave danger. Winding up at the Dreamy Pines Motor Court - a far cry from the privileged world she was born to - Vivienne finds herself in the company of two hardened killers: the perverse Sol Horror and the deadly Sluggsy Morant. When a coolly charismatic Englishman turns up, Viv, now in terrible danger, is not just hopeful, she is fascinated. Because he is James Bond, 007; the man shehopes will save her, the spy she hopes will love her...

About this title

Review:

"I felt the prod of a gun in my back but swung the door wide open ... I had gambled that they wouldn't shoot. They hadn't. Now all depended on the solitary man who stood on the threshold." When James Bond makes his first appearance in The Spy Who Loved Me, the novel is two thirds complete. It is Fleming's most experimental Bond story but one of his most successful, developing characters with a new fullness and constructing an adventure which builds momentum through a series of genuinely thrilling crescendos. We may see comparatively little of Bond himself here but The Spy Who Loved Me reveals more of the man than ever before.

This is the story of Vivienne Michel, a Bond Girl with a difference, whose first-person narration moves through three sections: "Me", describing her childhood, unhappiness and disastrous love affairs; "Them", in which she escapes the past only to find herself caught up in a life-threatening insurance job at the Dreamy Pines Motel Court; and "Him", where Bond enters and the story moves rapidly towards its resolution. There's a mythical quality to James Bond's appearance and disappearance from the action, but Fleming explores his character with great realism, enjoying the freedom to observe his hero objectively.

In many ways this is barely a Bond story at all--the book is firmly in Fleming's gangster tradition and Bond is not even on a mission, just stepping by chance into someone else's nightmare--but The Spy Who Loved Me is nonetheless one of the most exciting and skilful additions to the 007 canon. --Iain Campbell

Review:

"Ian Fleming keeps you riveted" (Sunday Telegraph)

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0141802987
• ISBN 13: 9780141802985
• Binding: Audio Cassette