From Russia With Love - Couverture souple

SMERSH, the Soviet counterintelligence agency, plans to commit a grand act of terrorism in the intelligence field. For this, it targets British secret service agent James Bond. Due in part to his role in the defeat of Le Chiffre, Mr. Big and Hugo Drax, Bond has been listed as an enemy of the Soviet state and a “death warrant” has been issued for him. His death is planned to precipitate a major sex scandal, which will run through the world press for months and leave his and his service’s reputation in tatters. Bond’s killer is to be SMERSH executioner Red Grant, a psychopath whose homicidal urges coincide with the full moon. Kronsteen, SMERSH’s chess-playing master planner, and Colonel Rosa Klebb, head of Operations and Executions, devise the operation. They persuade an attractive young cipher clerk, Corporal Tatiana Romanova, to falsely defect from her post in Istanbul, claiming to have fallen in love with Bond after seeing his file photograph.

Ian Fleming was born in 1908 and educated at Eton. After a brief period at Sandhurst, he went abroad to further his education. In 1931, having failed to get an appointment in the Foreign Office, he joined Reuters News Agency. During the Second World War he was Personal assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence at the Admiralty, rising from the rank of Lieutenant to Commander. His wartime experiences provided him with a first-hand knowledge of secret operations. After the war he became Foreign Manager of Kemsley Newspapers and built his own house, Goldeneye, in Jamaica. There at the age of 42 he wrote Casino Royale, the first of the James Bond novels. By the time of his death in 1964, Fleming's fourteen Bond adventures had sold more than 40 million copies and the cult of James Bond was internationally established.