Goldfinger: James Bond 007 (Vintage Classics) by Fleming, Ian (September 6, 2012) Paperback Paperback – 1 Jan. 1703

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is so much better than the film.It is good to see the background behind the story - the parts that were either changed or omitted when making the film. For example, the book reveals Felix's background and how he came to be involved with James Bond.Part of the value of reading the book is that it includes things that could never make it into a screenplay, for example Bond’s thought processes. He is always alert, aware of gestures which are designed to look innocent such as a stranger in the street who casually asks Bond, like a hawker, if he wants a woman. Bond declines, so the stranger offers him dirty photos and reaches into his pocket to pull some out to show him. ‘The gesture of the hand slipping into the coat was so well known to Bond, so full of old dangers, that, when the hand flashed out and the long silver finger went for his throat, Bond was on balance and ready for him’.You get to see a side of Bond that never comes across in the films. After murdering the above man, Bond says that he doesn’t like killing people. But it is his job. ‘Regret was unprofessional – worse, it was death-watch beetle in the soul’. The quality of the prose is superb.There is a darkness to Bond that does not come out in the film (though it has started to be expressed in the Daniel Craig films). Bond, at an airport to catch a flight, watches an aircraft take off. ‘The windows in the transit lounge rattled softly. People got up to watch. Bond tried to read their expressions. Did they hope the plane would crash – give them something to watch, something to talk about, something to fill their empty lives? Or did they wish it well? Which way were they willing the sixty passengers? To live or to die?’The description of the round of golf with the cheating Goldfinger is superb. And, once more, the prose is good, for example: ‘The difference between a good golf shot and a bad one is the same as the difference between a beautiful and a plain woman – a matter of millimetres’ (the same can be said for a man, I must add).The assault on Fort Knox is far-fetched but that did not stop me from enjoying the book.A thoroughly enjoyable read.