A big green stamp is visible on the half title page announcing that `if in good condition this book can be exchanged at Heygates Easy Library, Bognor Regis'. It is hard to link James Bond with Bognor Regis.

M sends Bond after The Spangled Mob, smugglers moving diamonds out of Africa and into the United States. Bond, posing as a mule, meets Tiffany, a beautiful blonde who can be as cold as the ice she helps move. Bond is successful in making the delivery and recieves both payment and a firm dismissal. To achieve his true objective of shutting down the operation, Bond decides to make trouble to see who comes to slap his hand. It's a mission that takes him all the way to Vegas and back across the Atlantic. As always it's a highly physical task but the real mileage may be on his heart.

This is the fourth book in the Bond series. I really felt while reading this one that Fleming had come into his own. He's comfortable with his formula, with his protagonist and it shows. It feels polished. And he actually made an effort to develop the female lead this time around! Given her tragic past, Tiffany has a remarkable sense of humor. I loved her romance with Bond. To see him melt her and to see her change him. There's still a lot of humanity in Bond at this point and I'm enjoying that. I was slightly disappointed with the Spang brothers. They weren't scary enough, big enough, bad enough to be villains worth of a double-oh's attention.
Despite that, Diamonds is a solid entry in the Bond saga.... now off to Russia! ( )

"There's nothing so extraordinary about American gangsters," protested Bond. "They're not Americans. Mostly a lot of Italian bums with monogrammed shirts who spend the day eating spaghetti and meat-balls and squirting scent over themselves."

Ian Fleming's fourth James Bond novel, Diamonds Are Forever, sees 007 tasked with infiltrating a diamond smuggling pipeline that runs from Africa to the United States, masterminded by a horde of mobsters that could have easily been ripped from the pages of an early 50's comic strip or dime novel. Although perhaps not on par with the previous Fleming novel, Moonraker, or the tightly plotted follow-up, From Russia With Love, the master is still better than any other writer when it comes to crafting a globe-trotting, tension filled adventure with page-turning addictiveness. Diamonds Are Forever was something of a cornerstone in Fleming's 007 series - it was the first to feature truly in-depth character development that would slowly become more prominent as the novels progressed.

James Bond himself is very different from the jaded man seen at the outset of Casino Royale or the broken man from much later down the line in You Only Live Twice. Here he is seen as a man with a lust for life - joking and smiling with his best pal Felix Leiter (who is now working as a detective for the Pinkerton Agency), treasuring his time with love interest Tiffany Case (and feeling genuine jealousy and frustration at her frosty demeanor towards him), and openly discussing his hopes and dreams for the future. Pretending to be criminal Peter Franks for the first half of the story, Bond even feels homesick for his true identity at certain points, showing that while he may still remain dedicated to his mission, he is not an unfeeling ice cold machine.

Fleming always seemed to be able to introduce at least one villainous character with some sort of deformity or grotesque feature in each of his novels. In this case it is actually a tandem, the homosexual hitmen Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd. Despite the fact that Fleming was good friends with a few gay men, I don't believe the man ever had the slightest clue what homosexuals were really like behind closed doors (hint: just as boring as the rest of us!). I think he may have been under the impression gays must have alien brains compared to heterosexuals, but whatever the case, if you can ignore how potentially offensive Wint and Kidd are, they're a suitably creepy pair of thugs for Bond to contend with. They are perhaps the only element from the novel that remains more or less the same in the film version, minus the thumb-sucking.

Critics of Diamonds Are Forever have often commented on how the crew of villains, mostly the American heavies, never seem to measure up to some of the more serious SMERSH/SPECTRE threats seen in other Fleming books. True, Spang and his men are not out for world domination, but I would disagree with the notion that they are not a potent or serious threat for 007. Despite Bond's arrogance towards them at the beginning, they have a smart, tidy operation up and running, the profits from which have bought them most of downtown Las Vegas. And as the reader discovers later in the novel, Bond gets quite the beating once captured and cornered by these 'wise-guys'. There's no elaborate method of torture employed by these Mafia men, no psychological interrogation techniques, they simply beat the tar out of a man until he passes out. Brutish stuff, and perhaps a reflection of Fleming's thoughts on American criminals.

As for the high number of scene changes, it doesn't bother me like it seems to others. Fleming manages to capture London as it was many decades ago, and the short scenes taking place in Africa seem well researched and appropriate. What's really impressive is that for an Englishman, Fleming was able to paint fairly vivid pictures of American cities, in this case Las Vegas. Despite the fact that the place has changed considerably since the mid 1950's, some things will always remain the same, in particular the sleaze, the glitz, and the debauchery. Fleming's 'gilded mouse-trap' description of the floors of Vegas casinos is still the first thing that enters my mind whenever the subject of Las Vegas or gambling is brought up.

"And the gamblers stood and tore at the handles of the machines as if they hated what they were doing. And, once they had seen their fate in the small glass window, they didn't wait for the wheels to stop spinning but rammed in another coin and reached up a right arm that knew exactly where to go. Crank-clatter-ting. Crank-clatter-ting."

Overall, DAF is a slightly underrated James Bond novel featuring a more subdued plot, a very different approach to the villains, one of the better leading ladies to grace the series, and a nice glimpse into the deep kinship shared between Bond and Leiter. If you've never read it, give it a shot, and if you've previously dismissed the book, give it a second look. It deserves revisiting. ( )

One more gem from the pen of Ian Fleming. After reading several original novels I have to say that nobody depicts James Bond in a manner Ian Fleming had (I am yet to read few newer James Bond novels written by other authors to see how close they have come to the original :)). He is shown as human being, with his fears, mistakes (for which he pays quite a price), morals, quite a streak of vengeance and complete recklessness in his character, but always a complete professional - what has to be done is done, no regrets and no remorse (except only, as it is case in this novel, a reflection on why people always tend to do the things the hard way using violence). I have to say that Daniel Craig's James Bond is very, very similar to the one presented in Fleming's novels (at first I was truly skeptic about him playing James Bonds but I am truly glad I was proved wrong).

James Bond has infiltrated an international diamond smuggling organization with a goal of identifying all components of "the diamond pipeline" - all the key players. As it is usually the case in James Bond novels things do not go smoothly and James Bond finds himself yet again fighting for his very life.

If you are looking for great adventure and great characters read this one (better yet, if you can, do read all of the Fleming's novels :))

Highly recommended. ( )

James Bond -- a much different fellow from the films. Better!