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Ian Fleming

Diamonds Are Forever (James Bond (Original Series)) Paperback – October 16, 2012

by Ian Fleming (Author)

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Book 4 of 14: James Bond (Original Series)

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An international diamond-smuggling pipeline has opened up and the British Treasury wants to know who’s controlling it. Impersonating a captured courier named Peter Franks, Bond infiltrates the criminal ring and finds an unlikely ally in Tiffany Case, a gorgeous American with a dark past. As the ring’s stateside go-between, she may be just another link in the chain, but Tiffany is also Bond’s best shot at finding the elusive figure at the head of the operation―a syndicate boss known only by the initials “ABC.” But if Bond’s cover gets blown, he’ll find that the only thing harder than a diamond is surviving the payback of a pair of murderous henchmen.

With a sparkling trail of smuggled gems as bait, Diamonds Are Forever leads Bond on a globe-hopping mission where deadly assassins lurk behind every corner.

The text in this edition has been restored by the Fleming family company Ian Fleming Publications, to reflect the work as it was originally published.

Print length

245 pages
Language

English
Publication date

October 16, 2012
Dimensions

5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches
ISBN-10

9781612185460
ISBN-13

978-1612185460
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Editorial Reviews

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“The remarkable thing about this book is that it is written by an Englishman. The scene is almost entirely American and it rings true to an American. I am unaware of any other writer who has accomplished this.” ―Raymond Chandler

“Once again Ian Fleming has brought it off―giving us, in Diamonds are Forever, probably the best thriller of the season…Mr Fleming’s writing is admirable; but his greatest gift is the ability, before his fantastic adventures begin, to paint convincingly a background against which they do not seem fantastic.” ―Birmingham Post

“James Bond is one of the most cunningly synthesized heroes in crime-fiction. He combines the tough-tender glamour of the sado-masochistic, Casanovesque private eye with the connoisseurship of a member―perhaps a rather new one―of White’s, laces this already heady mixture with a shot of Buchanish Imperialist spirit, and adds a tiny pinch of ground Ashenden…Mr. Fleming’s method is worth noting, and recommending.” ―The Observer

“Mr Fleming has unusual virtues: a fine eye for places―in this book there are admirable accounts of Saratoga and Las Vegas―an ability to convey his own interest in the mechanics of gambling, and an air of knowledgeableness that many writers in this genre lack.” ―The Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Ian Fleming was born in London on May 28, 1908. He was educated at Eton College and later spent a formative period studying languages in Europe. His first job was with Reuters News Agency where a Moscow posting gave him firsthand experience with what would become his literary bête noire―the Soviet Union. During World War II he served as Assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence and played a key role in Allied espionage operations.

After the war he worked as foreign manager of the Sunday Times, a job that allowed him to spend two months each year in Jamaica. Here, in 1952, at his home “Goldeneye,” he wrote a book called Casino Royale―and James Bond was born. The first print run sold out within a month. For the next twelve years Fleming produced a novel a year featuring Special Agent 007, the most famous spy of the century. His travels, interests, and wartime experience lent authority to everything he wrote. Raymond Chandler described him as “the most forceful and driving writer of thrillers in England.” Sales soared when President Kennedy named the fifth title, From Russia With Love, one of his favorite books. The Bond novels have sold more than one hundred million copies worldwide, boosted by the hugely successful film franchise that began in 1962 with the release of Dr. No.

He married Anne Rothermere in 1952. His story about a magical car, written in 1961 for their only son Caspar, went on to become the well-loved novel and film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Fleming died of heart failure on August 12, 1964, at the age of fifty-six.

Learn more about Ian Fleming at www.ianfleming.com.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1612185460
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Thomas & Mercer; James Bond edition (October 16, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 245 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781612185460
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1612185460
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #413,822 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #3,695 in Espionage Thrillers (Books)
- #46,404 in Mysteries (Books)

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Ian Fleming

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Ian Fleming was a British author and journalist. His first novel, Casino Royale (1953), introduced spy hero, James Bond, agent 007, to the world. It was the first of fourteen James Bond books which have gone on to sell over 60 million copies worldwide and be translated into 20 languages. Beginning with the movie adaptation of Dr No in 1961, the series also sparked the longest-running film franchise in history. Both Fleming and his fictional counterpart have become synonymous with style, glamour and thrilling adventures, as well as universally recognised phrases such as “My name’s Bond, James Bond” and “shaken and not stirred”.

Fleming was born in London in 1908. In the 1930s he worked at Reuters news agency before joining Naval Intelligence as an officer during the Second World War. His talent for writing fast and engaging prose, along with his knowledge of espionage and his fertile imagination led to the creation of James Bond, arguably one of the most-famous fictional characters of all time. He also wrote children’s classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Fleming was married to Ann Rothermere with whom he had a son, Caspar. He died in 1964.

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jude pepper

Licenced To Mutate On The Way To The Silver Screen.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 3, 2018

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i finally got around to the comparison.
James Bond has long been a poster child of cinema's tendency to, let's just say, take liberties when adapting literature. it's been said that you can watch Goldfinger and then read Gone With The Wind for all the plot correlation you can expect. well, looking into it has long been one of my one-of-these-days-if-i-can-find-the-time goals, and having finally commenced the operation, i thought i might share some thoughts on he subject.
i thought i'd better make it one of the exploits associated with Sean Connery. i've said in a number of other reviews that i for one have yet to be brainwashed to the misconception that the definitive 007 could ever be anyone but Roger Moore. i wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that we owe this groundless claim to the same geniuses who keep telling us the Holocaust never happened. but i never meant that to suggest that i can't enjoy or appreciate the Connery films. too often we're left to think, if not told outright, that that line in the sand is of Mason-Dixon proportions, that the fanatics of one are incapable of cutting the other any slack. i hope that's not the case, at least not overwhelmingly. in fact, i'd say that Bond is like any other oft-portrayed character, such as Sherlock Holmes or The Doctor on Doctor Who: if it's something you enjoy, then in actual practice your favorite is whichever you're watching at the moment.
this seemed the logical candidate for such a case, since the film that resulted from Diamonds Are Forever is far an' away the coolest and most satisfying of Connery's 007 exploits. (giving us, as if we needed it, one more reason to loathe his half-assed attempt to reclaim the part a dozen years later, Never Say Never Again. if he hadn't been roped into that mess, then Connery would be able to say he'd gone out on top.)
it's hard to know where to begin extolling the film's abundant charms. i'm tempted to describe Charles Gray as the very best Blofeld, but i'm sure it's just that he happens to be my favorite of the actors to play him. who, for instance, could forget his delightfully cheesy pomposity as narrator of The Rocky Horror Picture Show? and of course, his is the definitive portrayal of Mycroft Holmes, equally eccentric bureaucrat brother of Sherlock.
speaking of villains, no Bond ever had an antagonist quite like Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, the hitmen who always work together, presumably because they're lovers as well. i can't think of any 007 villains i'd be less delighted to meet down the proverbial dark alley on the proverbial dark night. okay, okay, so they're mere henchmen - closer to Oddjob's level than Blofeld's - but they're still easily the very creepiest sparring partners any Bond is ever likely to come up against.
there's also the delightfully satirical caricature of Howard Hughes in Willard Whyte, not to mention the fact that Jill St. John is one of the most drop-dead sexy Bond girls ever. but oh yes, i'm not supposed to be reviewing the movie, am i?
there's no shortage of perceptible fluctuations. the book's villains are mere diamond smugglers, with no deeper agenda involving a laser satellite. obviously, this is because the book predates the most heated period of the Space Race by at least a decade. for the same reason, there's no Willard Whyte, because Howard Hughes hadn't become a weirdo recluse just yet.
similarly, that Darth Vader or Professor Moriarty of Bond's world, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, doesn't appear because Ian Fleming hadn't created him yet. in fact, it could be said that his parent organization, SPECTRE, is coming into fruition over the course of this book. at one point we find the villains based in a ghost town in Nevada called Spectreville, which can't help but seem like a harbinger of things to come.
in Blofeld's place we have a standard-issue nameless criminal figurehead known as "ABC." the hands-on villains here are a textbook branch of America mafia, run by The Spang Brothers.
the most jarring surpise in the book involves that closest thing to a Watson to Bond's Sherlock, CIA agent Felix Leiter. in a previous book, Live & Let Die, Felix had been fed to sharks. if that sounds familiar it's most likely because the incident was liberally appropriated for the Timothy Dalton film Licence To Kill, right down to the villains' explanatory message, "he disagreed with something that ate him."
anyway, the Felix with whom Bond reunites here has a prosthetic arm and leg, and has had to have extensive plastic surgery on his face. he's no longer suited to the CIA (unless he wants what's known as a "desk job"), so he's now working as private eye for the Pinkerton Agency.
actually, of the ones i've read so far, the one that goes farthest afield (or should i say "was gone farthest afield from") is it's immediate predecessor, Moonraker. most obviously, it doesn't involve any trip into space, but again, the Space Race hadn't really picked up yet. it's been argued that the movie version of Moonraker was in reaction to the phenomenon Star Wars had just launched, so again, the most significant difference is that the world around Bond had been updated. it's not a bad film by any means, but certain cynics will always write it off as a ride on George Lucas' coattails. (perhaps coincidentally, Moonraker is, at least so far, the only Bond film ever to be the highest-grossing film of it's particular year.)
also, the Moonraker novel is the one containing the as-yet most sobering revelation: Bond has maybe a mission or two a year. most of the time his job is - movie purists brace yourselves! - that of making out and filing reports. makes sense, given that people like the police spend most of their jobs filling out reports, but the notion of Bond as a pencil-pusher nonetheless kills a bit of the mystique.
yes, movies tend to waver from books, but you have to keep in mind that movies aren't books and books aren't movies. the two media have different strengths and weaknesses, so it's not always vital, or even necessarily the best idea, for the movie to simply play Follow The Leader. the movie has to convey the essence of the book by cinematic means. (look at it from the other end of the spectrum and ask yourself: in a case where it's a movie first, has the novelization ever been better?)
as i think i've mentioned, the common thread in alternations seems to be adjusting it to a more contemporary setting and/or attitude. for instance, there's a bit of casual race stereotyping, broken English and the like, particularly in Live & Let Die (which you may recall involves a voodoo cult). this reflection of what was taught and/or assumed in those less enlightened times isn't quite mean-spirited enough to qualify as true racism. (Bond even expresses a not-so-grudging admiration for "the colored people" at one point.) all the same, it's a potential powderkeg which you can't fault the movies for playing down.
the bottom line is that when you get right down to it, it's James Bond. for the most part Ian Fleming writes with the same jovial escapist spirit with which "Cubby"Broccoli filmed. it's not gonna be quite the same experience, but if you're the type who enjoys both James Bond and reading, there's no reason not to give it a whirl.
just always remember, the definitive is Roger Moore, PERIOD.

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Bill Williams

Bond at his exciting best...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 6, 2013

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I have to admit, going into "Diamonds are Forever," the fourth James Bond novel from the pen of creator Ian Fleming, I had my prejudices. Up to this point everything I had known about the novel had been influenced by the 1971 film version with Sean Connery and Jill St. John. For that matter, everything about Fleming's novels were influenced by the film releases. So, going into the original novel (as with the first three books), what Fleming wrote and what was adapted for the screen are two vastly different animals.

For example, the novel is not the campy schlock that was put
on screen. It's straightforward drama and action throughout. It's as if the screenwriters took the basic premise of Bond versus diamond smugglers, threw in the tasty dish that is Tiffany Case, added a quick reference to the mud baths, and made the henchmen Wint and Kidd' s gay relationship (only briefly hinted at) more flamboyant in the final film, and cooked up everything else (even the whole Blofeld angle). Granted, this was at a time in the Bond film franchise where producers Broccoli and Saltzman began to stray more from Ian Fleming's original intent and make the James Bond character even more flamboyant on the screen than in the pages of the books.

Having said that, I was really surprised by the pacing of the novel, at this point Fleming's longest. It is a more carefully constructed yarn filled with accurate descriptions of locale and realistic moments of gambling and horse racing and action. And there's the sad yet very real back story that is Tiffany Case's past, which makes her an attractive foil for our hero. He does more than just physically rescue her, he saves her inside and out. And Bond's motives for saving his friends and defeating the bad guys are to the point and not the markings of a flashy secret agent with quick jokes and gadgets. It's a simpler yet more significant character who relies on his thinking and attention to duty.

I can understand why some people are not as big a fan of "Diamonds are Forever" (the novel) if they had the movie on the brain. Fortunately, I have not seen the film version all the way through, only a few clips here and there plus the trailer, so my reading the novel is not as influenced by the film version as, say, "Casino Royale" (which they got right in 2006). And it's as different as the book and film versions of Fleming's third installment, "Moonraker".

Still, it makes for good solid storytelling through and through from Bond's creator. And as opposed to the later cycles from John Gardner and Raymond Benson, I'm going through the Fleming originals as he meant them to be read.

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Da Lowrider

This is fun for me .. I like it a lot

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 6, 2022

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Amazon often writes me and says they won't post a particular review as it doesn't fall within their guidelines. They offer zero clue what the perceived problem was. They will not communicate further and refuse a valid review. I simply waste time writing reviews for Amazon. Amazon behaves like a dictatorship asking for free speech then repressing it.

That being said, your product is just peachy. It works as advertised. I will likely buy it again.
I will recommend it to all my associates. There you Amazon, I hope this falls within your criteria for the reviews you beg me to write for you for free.

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Colorado Reviewer

nothing like the movie

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 21, 2022

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Only the name, but the book and screenplay of the movie were both outstanding ! I don’t regret the time spent with both!

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Mark Speed

Not your archetypal Bond

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 11, 2022

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I know my expectations have been shaped by the films, but this really was very wide of what I was expecting. It's really a gangster caper. I'd heard that the appeal of the original novels was that, in a grey post-War Britain, it provided travel and colour. A transatlantic flight to America was something to aspire to, and as described here before the age of jet airliners, it was very different.

It's a fairly slow-paced novel, and Bond and his pals do get into a lot of trouble. It was pretty enjoyable. There were a few surprises for me in terms of facts. I thought they'd have been picked up in the several decades since original pubication. For example, a car would backfire like an 88mm, not a .88mm. A great many of the readers would have had first-hand experience of these in WWII and it was one of the most notorious German weapons. Weather / radio ships... Jig was Juliet, and that would have been common knowledge because it's the phonetic alphabet (and Fleming was familiar with it). The Queen Elizabeth would have started off on the 45th parallel (in New York) but would not have gone to the 30th parallel (which is to the south), but would have gone just to the north of the 50th parallel for Southampton. Again, common knowledge in that era. So it's a real mystery to me. Did Fleming put these in as deliberate errors - some kind of code? If not, how did they get through the original edit and continue for several decades? Were the ebooks produced from a really old manuscript? I'd love to know the answer.

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Jake

Great to return to the original story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 12, 2021

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Reading again after many years I am very happy to be brought back to the roots of the modern phenomenon but I recommend reading this and all the Bond novels for their own sake and not as film comparisons. The writing in the 1950s and 1960s is very different to the expectations of the film makers and cinema audiences of later years and whilst some films bear a resemblance to the books (some don't), at best they all contain additional embellishments (and some wild ones at that) and some are all but completely different story lines resembling the book in little but title only. It's important to realise the era in which these books were written, three books before the first satellite (sputnik 1957) and nine before the the first communication satellite (Telstar 1962) so non of the space age technology of the films existed at the time.

2 people found this helpful

M

Joke Villains - Disappointing Effort

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 1, 2019

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The most disappointing of Fleming's Bond canon - it's not as out of leftfield as The Spy Who Loved Me; it follows the formula of the other novels, but it comes across as almost a joke. The villains are laughable, the action sequences are pretty poor and the mission doesn't carry high enough stakes.
Fleming wrote a novel a year for a decade and a half. 3 months off working at the Times, some years he was on form, others he wasn't, but a book was coming out nonetheless... this must have been one of the 'off years', posting in a story to meet the publishing deadline.
It's most redeeming asset is the prologue/ch1, set in West Africa, with a nicely crafted semi-allegory featuring a scorpion. The ludicrously named Tiffany Case also deserves mention as a decent Bond girl with a no-nonsense attitude and more depth than some of the others.
This is towards the very bottom of the pile of Fleming's Bond, jostling with The Spy Who Loved Me for the wooden spoon.

3 people found this helpful

Philip Chadwick

Not subtle but a great readable book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 26, 2022

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I was lucky enough to be in my mid teens when I first came across Bond and read all of them in a year
So I was a little apprehensive when I came to read them again some 50 years later, but they are still great - nostalgic and exciting and not box ticking diversity/inclusivity stuffed drab stories
Revisit a world of real men! and strong women

One person found this helpful

Alan Fairhurst

Diamonds Are The Mob's Best Secret

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 4, 2022

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Diamond smuggling is a way to make vast sums of money. M wants to know who, where and when so sends Bond to investigate. With help from Felix Leiter, in his new job, a taxi driver and the enigmatic Miss Case; Bond travels across the USA to unravel the mystery. Fast paced thriller by Fleming without any clutter. A must read for Bond fans and thriller readers alike.

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Diamonds Are Forever (James Bond (Original Series)) Paperback – October 16, 2012

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