The Man with the Golden Gun

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Ian Fleming

Introducing James Bond: charming, sophisticated, handsome, chillingly ruthless and licensed to kill. This, the first of Ian Fleming's tales of secret agent 007, finds Bond on a mission to neutralize a lethal, high-rolling Russian operative called simply "le Chiffre" -- by ruining him at the Baccarat table and forcing his Soviet spymasters to "retire" him. It seems that lady luck is taken with 007 -- le Chiffre has hit a losing streak. But some people just refuse to play by the rules, and Bond's attraction to a beautiful female agent leads him to disaster and an unexpected savior...

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Graham Greene

Raven is an ugly man dedicated to ugly deeds. His cold-blooded killing of a European Minister of War is an act of violence with chilling repercussions, not just for Raven himself but for the nation as a whole. The money he receives in payment for the murder is made up of stolen notes and when the first of these is traced, Raven becomes a man on the run. As he tracks down the agent who has been double-crossing him and attempts to elude the police, he becomes both hunter and hunted: an unwitting weapon of a strange kind of social justice. In doing so, he sets the stage for Greene’s next novel, Brighton Rock.

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Text: Peter O'Donnell

In her first adventure for British Intelligence Modesty Blaise with her loyal lieutenant, Willie Garvin, must foil a multi-million pound diamond heist. They travel from London to the South of France, across the Mediterranean to Cairo before battling, against impossible odds, a private army of professional killers.

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(by) Sara Woods

>The trial of Ellen Gray for murder comes early in the story, She is defended by Antony Maitland Q.C. and the jury's verdict surprises both Ellen and Antony >This murder has been committed in 1965. But it is evident to Antony that its motivation derives from a bizarre double-murder in 1946, when a woman and her lover had been shot dead by a jealous husband returning from the war; at least, that was the historical record. >Antony began to doubt the whole history. He began to think it odd that two murderers should have been found among the same small group, even if the crimes were nearly twenty years apart. So it is on this small group. the tight-knit clique who were friends in the forties, that his attention increasingly falls. >Then Antony Maitland moves from the role of barrister to that of detective, as he has done before. Supported by his wife Jenny, aided by his friend Roger Farrell (and as always derided by his formidable uncle. Sir Nicholas Harding Q.C.), he seeks solutions to the murders quite different from past convictions and police thinking. And at last, in a surprising and convincing denouement, he finds an answer.