Also, there are quite few parts of the book that are absolutely beautiful and those are the descriptions of marine life. There are quite a few scenes that take part under water and I would not have missed reading these sections for anything. Fleming had just as much of a gift for writing about nature as he did for making his hero look a preposterous twit: p81 –‘Bond shot straight into the screaming mouth and the man’s head crashed against the side window.’– Brutal

The basics: James Bond comes over to the United States to work a case with Felix Leiter. They are after Mr. Big, a big time criminal who has ties to voodoo and a Russian spy ring. Turns out Mr. Big is involved in smuggling valuable gold coins out of the Caribbean to fund Russian spy activities. Bond ends up in Jamaica, has run ins with sharks, poisonous fish and lots of bad guys. Plus there is a beautiful girl (of course). Typical James Bond fare. The action is great. The blatant racism is not. I first read this book when I was in my mid teens some sixty years ago and decides on a re-read as homage to the late Sean Connery, whom to me, will always be the real James Bond. Bond and Solitaire are saved when the limpet mine explodes seconds before they are dragged over the reef: though temporarily stunned by the explosion and injured on the coral, they are protected from the explosion by the reef and Bond watches as Mr Big, who survived the explosion, is killed by the sharks and barracuda. Quarrel then rescues the couple.Bond has a week’s training regime in Jamaica which made me smile. ‘By the end of the week, Bond was sunburned and hard. He had cut his cigarettes down to ten a day and had not had a single drink.. Spartan, Bond. Spartan. He really does mean business. I have always been a big fan of the James Bond movies and I read a couple of the books years ago. I actually got in trouble in high school for bringing one of the books to school with me. I can't even remember which one. The principal said it was a "dirty'' book. Some of my other classmates had Steven King novels that had much more graphic things in them, but I had no choice but to leave James at home from then on. I never read the entire series. In 2018 I have made a personal promise to read more books that I've always wanted to read, but never seemed to make the time. And James Bond has been on that list for a very long time.

Philip Day of The Sunday Times noted "How wincingly well Mr Fleming writes"; [59] the reviewer for The Times thought that "[t]his is an ingenious affair, full of recondite knowledge and horrific spills and thrills—of slightly sadistic excitements also—though without the simple and bold design of its predecessor". [70] Elizabeth L Sturch, writing in The Times Literary Supplement, observed that Fleming was "without doubt the most interesting recent recruit among thriller-writers" [71] and that Live and Let Die "fully maintains the promise of... Casino Royale." [71] Tempering her praise of the book, Sturch thought that "Mr Fleming works often on the edge of flippancy, rather in the spirit of a highbrow", [71] although overall she felt that the novel "contains passages which for sheer excitement have not been surpassed by any modern writer of this kind". [71] The reviewer for The Daily Telegraph felt that "the book is continually exciting, whether it takes us into the heart of Harlem or describes an underwater swim in shark-infested waters; and it is more entertaining because Mr Fleming does not take it all too seriously himself". [72] George Malcolm Thompson, writing in The Evening Standard, believed Live and Let Die to be "tense; ice-cold, sophisticated; Peter Cheyney for the carriage trade". [23] You got a problem with my bothering to call Bond/Fleming as racist? Okay, I know it would be difficult to find many wholly enlightened and non-racist pulp, noir, adventurer stories in 1954. You don’t look for subtle feminist or anti-racist texts in the mid-twentieth century. But there’s a difference—I think—between some of James Ellroy’s racist characters and Ellroy. Bond in the movies is suave and never crass, but Fleming's Bond (and the narrator) here seems a bit nasty in places I didn’t expect. Maybe that’s my real complaint, that Fleming’s Bond is not the suave smirking seductive Bond of Sean Connery or Roger Moore but a kind of existentialist-lite cold guy dripping in some darker disdain for everything that is not him. I like him besting Solitaire and Big, though, I'll admit.I don't think I've ever heard of a great negro criminal before," said Bond. "Chinamen, of course, the men behind the opium trade. There've been some big time Japs, mostly in pearls and drugs. Plenty of negroes mixed up in diamonds and gold in Africa, but always in a small way. They don't seem to take to big business. Pretty law-abiding chaps I should have thought except when they're drunk too much."

I have to say I really enjoyed reading about Bond and Felix Leiter enjoying the nightlife in Harlem. And I don’t think I detected any racism at all from the characters themselves during these scenes. It was all just the terms that Fleming was using in places.Edit: December 19, 2018 This novel is really two and a half stars, not three, but Goodreads doesn't let me give half stars. p89-ish – It was interesting to hear about all the trouble that Bond and Leiter’s night out in Harlem caused to the police, the CIA and the FBI. It was refreshing to actually hear about side effects like that, rather than just pretending spy stuff happens in a bubble. And also cool to see that Leiter and Bond were both pretty chilled about it all. I first came to Bond through watching The Saint episodes late at night. My Dad in an effort to get more than three channels on our TV, one of which flipped every few seconds, built this antenna the size of a small Cessna and hoisted it on a pole that soared high above the tallest trees. He connected a remote to it that would rotate the antenna allowing us to fine tune certain channels. We could now get seven channels, sort of. One of the channels put on The Saint and there was Roger Moore, young, dashing, and boy did I want to be him when I grew up. The first Bond I went to in the theater, which for the life of me I’m not sure which one, but it starred Roger Moore. So for me RM was BOND. I couldn’t say Moore was my favorite Bond or the best Bond, but like a first kiss it is hard not to be biased by that first experience. As in all Bond books, the best part is the villain's speech(es). When Bond is captured (usually once, but in this book it's twice) the villain always ties Bond up and then gives a long speech about how he's so great, Bond will never defeat him, there will be no rescue, blah blah blah. These are always epic, very entertaining speeches, with Bond occasionally breaking in to make a smartass comment or two. They are very cinematic and fun. Best part(s) of the book BY FAR.

Fleming’s own attitudes towards women shine through his Bond character with regard to Solitare, the white woman who he rescues from Mr. Big. Fleming seems to have regarded women as conquests and told many people that women were more like pets to him than people [per Andrew Lycett’s biography of IF]. Fleming was well known as a womanizer and was accused by several people of being ‘a cad and a bounder,’ something which he did not dispute. Solitare is mostly a prize for Bond, something to be enjoyed once the action is over with.

So y'all can argue about sexism, feminism, objectifying women, misogyny, etc. I'm pretty sure many girls today would jump at a chance to be a Bond girl even for a day. He does treat his women well. Even Bond haters cannot deny that. I'd never mix the attribute of “womanising” with “misogyny”. I mean, Bond is anything BUT misogynistic. A true gentleman, a gallant knight to the ladies. Even if his flaw is that he likes all of them. Live and Let Die was adapted as a daily comic strip which was published in The Daily Express and syndicated around the world. [77] The adaptation ran from 15 December 1958 to 28 March 1959. [78] The adaptation was written by Henry Gammidge and illustrated by John McLusky, whose drawings of Bond had a resemblance to Sean Connery, the actor who portrayed Bond in Dr. No three years later. [79] Bond turned brusquely away from the window. A romantic picture, perhaps. But it must have been something like that.”