Diamonds Are Forever: A James Bond Novel

By Ian Fleming

USING HIS FORMIDABLE SKILLS OF DECEPTION, JAMES BOND WORKS TO TAKE DOWN AN AMERICAN GANG

The Spangled Mob are no ordinary American gangsters.

They prey on the addictions of the wealthy and treat the poor as collateral. Their ruthless desire for power and fierce brotherly loyalty make them deadly and invincible.

Now James Bond must go deep undercover in his urgent new assignment: to destroy their millionaire masterminds, Jack and Seraffimo Spang.

But the Spangs’ cruel influence is everywhere, from dusty African diamond mines to the frenzied gambling dens of Las Vegas. Can Bond find his men before his cover is blown?

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: May 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9780063298651

Ian Fleming

Ian Lancaster Fleming was born in London in 1908. His first job was at Reuters news agency, after which he worked briefly as a stockbroker before working in Naval Intelligence during World War Two. His first novel, Casino Royale, was published in 1953 and was an instant success. Fleming went on to write thirteen other Bond books as well as two works of nonfiction and the children’s classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The Bond books have earned praise from figures such as Raymond Chandler, who called Fleming “the most forceful and driving writer of thrillers in England” and President Kennedy, who named From Russia with Love as one of his favorite books. The books inspired a hugely successful series of film adaptations that began in 1962 with the release of Dr. No. He was married to Ann O'Neill, with whom he had a son, Caspar. He died in 1964.

Book preview

1

The Pipeline Opens

With its two fighting claws held forward like a wrestler’s arms the big Pandinus scorpion emerged with a dry rustle from the finger-sized hole under the rock.

There was a small patch of hard flat earth outside the hole and the scorpion stood in the centre of this on the tips of its four pairs of legs, its nerves and muscles braced for a quick retreat and its senses questing for the minute vibrations which would decide its next move.

The moonlight, glittering down through the great thorn bush, threw sapphire highlights off the hard, black polish of the six-inch body and glinted palely on the moist white sting which protruded from the last segment of the tail, now curved over parallel with the scorpion’s flat back.

Slowly the sting slid home into its sheath and the nerves in the poison sac at its base relaxed. The scorpion had decided. Greed had won over fear.

Twelve inches away, at the bottom of a sharp slope of sand, the small beetle was concerned only with trudging on towards better pastures than he had found under the thorn bush, and the swift rush of the scorpion down the slope gave him no time to open his wings.

The beetle’s legs waved in protest as the sharp claw snapped round his body, and then the sting lanced into him from over the scorpion’s head and immediately he was dead.

After it had killed the beetle the scorpion stood motionless for nearly five minutes. During this time it identified the nature of its prey and again tested the ground and the air for hostile vibrations. Reassured, its fighting claw withdrew from the half-severed beetle and its two small feeding pincers reached out and into the beetle’s flesh. Then for an hour, and with extreme fastidiousness, the scorpion ate its victim.

The great thorn bush under which the scorpion killed the beetle was quite a landmark in the wide expanse of rolling veld some forty miles south of Kissidougou in the south-western corner of French Guinea. On all horizons there were hills and jungle, but here, over twenty square miles, there was flat rocky ground which was almost desert and amongst the tropical scrub only this one thorn bush, perhaps because there was water deep beneath its roots, had grown to the height of a house and could be picked out from many miles away.

The bush grew more or less at the junction of three African states. It was in French Guinea but only about ten miles north of the northernmost tip of Liberia and five miles east of the frontier of Sierra Leone. Across this frontier are the great diamond mines around Sefadu. These are the property of Sierra International, which is part of the powerful mining empire of Afric International, which in turn is a rich capital asset of the British Commonwealth.

An hour earlier in its hole among the roots of the great thorn bush the scorpion had been alerted by two sets of vibrations. First there had been the tiny scraping of the beetle’s movements, and these belonged to the vibrations which the scorpion immediately recognised and diagnosed. Then there had been a series of incomprehensible thuds round the bush followed by a final heavy quake which had caved in part of the scorpion’s hole. These were followed by a soft rhythmic trembling of the ground which was so regular that it soon became a background vibration of no urgency. After a pause the tiny scraping of the beetle had continued, and it was greed for the beetle that, after a day of sheltering from its deadliest enemy, the sun, finally got the upper hand against the scorpion’s memory of the other noises and impelled it out of its lair into the filtering moonlight.

And now, as it slowly sucked the morsels of beetle-flesh off its feeding pincers, the signal for the scorpion’s own death sounded from far away on the eastern horizon, audible to a human, but made up of vibrations which were far outside the range of the scorpion’s sensory system.

And, a few feet away, a heavy, blunt hand, with bitten fingernails, softly raised a jagged piece of rock.

There was no noise, but the scorpion felt a tiny movement in the air above it. At once its fighting claws were up and groping and its sting was erect in the rigid tail, its near-sighted eyes staring up for a sight of the enemy.

The heavy stone came down.

‘Black bastard.’

The man watched as the broken insect whipped in its death agony.

The man yawned. He got to his knees in the sandy depression against the trunk of the bush where he had been sitting for nearly two hours and, his arms bent protectingly over his head, scrambled out into the open.

The noise of the engine which the man had been waiting for, and which had signed the scorpion’s death warrant, was louder. As the man stood and stared up the path of the moon, he could just see a clumsy black shape coming fast towards him out of the east and for a moment the moonlight glinted on whirling rotor blades.

The man rubbed his hands down the sides of his dirty khaki shorts and moved quickly round the bush to where the rear wheel of a battered motorcycle protruded from its hiding place. Below the pillion, on either side, there were leather tool-boxes. From one of these he extracted a small heavy package which he stowed inside his open shirt against the skin. From the other he took four cheap electric torches and went off with them to where, fifty yards from the big thorn bush, there was a clear patch of flat ground about the size of a tennis court. At three corners of the landing ground he screwed the butt end of a torch into the ground and switched it on. Then, the last torch alight in his hand, he took up his position at the fourth corner and waited.

The helicopter was moving slowly towards him, not more than a hundred feet from the ground, the big rotor blades idling. It looked like a huge, badly constructed insect. To the man on the ground it seemed, as usual, to be making too much noise.

The helicopter paused, pitching slightly, directly over his head. An arm came out of the cockpit and a torch flashed at him. It flashed dot–dash, the Morse for A.

The man on the ground flashed back a B and a C. He stuck the fourth torch into the ground and moved away, shielding his eyes against the coming whirl of dust. Above him the pitch of the rotor blades flattened imperceptibly and the helicopter settled smoothly into the space between the four torches. The clatter of the engine stopped with a final cough, the tail rotor spun briefly in neutral, and the main rotor blades completed a few awkward revolutions and then drooped to a halt.

In the echoing silence, a cricket started to zing in the thorn bush, and somewhere near at hand there was the anxious chirrup of a nightbird.

After a pause to let the dust settle, the pilot banged open the door of the cockpit, pushed out a small aluminium ladder and climbed stiffly to the ground. He waited beside his machine while the other man walked round the four corners of the landing ground picking up and dowsing the torches. The pilot was half an hour late at the rendezvous and he was bored at the prospect of listening to the other man’s inevitable complaint. He despised all Afrikaners. This one in particular. To a Reichsdeutscher and to a Luftwaffe pilot who had fought under Galland in defence of the Reich they were a bastard race, sly, stupid and ill-bred. Of course this brute had a tricky job, but it was nothing to navigating a helicopter five hundred miles over the jungle in the middle of the night, and then taking it back again.

As the other man came up, the pilot half raised his hand in greeting. ‘Everything all right?’

‘I hope so. But you’re late again. I shall only just make it through the frontier by first light.’

‘Magneto trouble. We all have our worries. Thank God there are only thirteen full moons a year. Well, if you’ve got the stuff let’s have it and we’ll tank her up and I’ll be off.’

Without speaking, the man from the diamond mines reached into his shirt and handed over the neat, heavy packet.

The pilot took it. It was damp with the sweat from the smuggler’s ribs. The pilot dropped it into a side pocket of his trim bush-shirt. He put his hand behind him and wiped his fingers on the seat of his shorts.

‘Good,’ he said. He turned towards his machine.

‘Just a moment,’ said the diamond smuggler. There was a sullen note in his voice.

The pilot turned back and faced him. He thought: it’s the voice of a servant who has screwed himself up to complain about his food. ‘Ja. What is it?’

‘Things are getting too hot. At the mines. I don’t like it at all. There’s been a big intelligence man down from London. You’ve read about him. This man Sillitoe. They say he’s been hired by the Diamond Corporation. There’ve been a lot of new regulations and all punishments have been doubled. It’s frightened out some of my smaller men. I had to be ruthless and, well, one of them somehow fell into the crusher. That tightened things up a bit. But I’ve had to pay more. An extra ten per cent. And they’re still not satisfied. One of these days those security people are going to get one of my middlemen. And you know these black swine. They can’t stand a real beating.’ He looked swiftly into the pilot’s eyes and then away again. ‘For the matter of that I doubt if anyone could stand the sjambok. Not even me.’

‘So?’ said the pilot. He paused. ‘Do you want me to pass this threat back to ABC?’

‘I’m not threatening anyone,’ said the other man hastily. ‘I just want them to know that it’s getting tough. They must know it themselves. They must know about this man Sillitoe. And look what the Chairman said in our annual report. He said that our mines were losing more than two million pounds a year through smuggling and IDB and that it was up to the government to stop it. And what does that mean? It means stop me!’

‘And me,’ said the pilot mildly. ‘So what do you want? More money?’

‘Yes,’ said the other man stubbornly. ‘I want a bigger cut. Twenty per cent more or I’ll have to quit.’ He tried to read some sympathy in the pilot’s face.

‘All right,’ said the pilot indifferently. ‘I’ll pass the message on to Dakar, and if they’re interested I expect they’ll send it on to London. But it’s nothing to do with me, and if I were you,’ the pilot unbent for the first time, ‘I wouldn’t put too much pressure on these people. They can be much tougher than this Sillitoe, or the Company, or any government I’ve ever heard of. On just this end of the pipeline, three men have died in the last twelve months. One for being yellow. Two for stealing from the packet. And you know it. That was a nasty accident your predecessor had, wasn’t it? Funny place to keep gelignite. Under his bed. Unlike him. He was always so careful about everything.’

For a moment they stood and looked at each other in the moonlight. The diamond smuggler shrugged his shoulders. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Just tell them I’m hard up and need more money to pass down the line. They’ll understand that, and if they’ve got any sense they’ll add another ten per cent on for me. If not . . .’ He left the sentence unfinished and moved towards the helicopter. ‘Come on. I’ll give you a hand with the gas.’

Ten minutes later the pilot climbed up into the cockpit and pulled the ladder in after him. Before he shut the door he raised a hand. ‘So long,’ he said. ‘See you in a month.’

The man on the ground suddenly felt lonely. ‘Totsiens,’ he said with a wave of the hand that was almost the wave of a lover. ‘Alles van die beste.’ He stood back and held a hand up to his eyes against the dust.

The pilot settled into his seat and fastened the seat belt, feeling for the rudder pedals with his feet. He made sure that the wheel brakes were on, pushed the pitch control lever right down, turned on the fuel and pressed the starter. Satisfied with the beat of the engine, he released the rotor brake and softly twisted the throttle on the pitch control. Outside the cabin windows the long rotor blades slowly swung by and the pilot glanced astern at the whirring tail rotor. He settled himself back and watched the rotor speed indicator creep up to two hundred revolutions a minute. When the needle was just over the two hundred, he released the wheel brakes and pulled up slowly and firmly on the pitch lever. Above him the blades of the rotor tilted and bit deeper into the air. More throttle, and the machine slowly rose clattering towards the sky until, at about one hundred feet, the pilot simultaneously gave it left rudder and pushed forward the joystick between his knees.

The helicopter swung towards the east and, gathering height and speed, roared away back up the path of the moon.

The man on the ground watched it go, and with it the £100,000 worth of diamonds his men had filched from the diggings during the past month and had casually held out on their pink tongues as he stood beside the dentist’s chair and brusquely inquired where it hurt.

Still talking about their teeth, he would pick the stones out of their mouths and hold them up to the dentist’s spotlight, and then softly he would say fifty, seventy-five, a hundred; and they always nodded and took the notes and hid them in their clothes and went out of the surgery with a couple of aspirins in a twist of paper as an alibi. They had to accept his price. There was no hope of a native getting diamonds out. When the miners did get out, perhaps once a year to visit their tribe or to bury a relative, there was a whole routine of X-rays and castor oil to be gone through, and a grim future if they were caught. It was so easy to go to the dental surgery and pick the day when ‘Him’ was on duty. And paper-money didn’t show up on X-rays.

The man wheeled his motorcycle over the rough ground on to the narrow trail and started off towards the frontier hills of Sierra Leone. They were more distinct now. He would only just have time to get to Susie’s hut before dawn. He grimaced at the thought of having to make love to her at the end of an exhausting night. But it would have to be done. Money was not enough to pay for the alibi she gave him. It was his white body she wanted. And then another ten miles to the club for breakfast and the coarse jokes of his friends.

‘Do a nice bit of inlay, Doc?’ ‘I hear she has the best set of frontals in the Province.’ ‘Say, Doc, what is it the full moon does to you?’

But each £100,000 worth meant £1,000 for him in a London safe deposit. Nice crisp fivers. It was worth it. By God it was. But not for much longer. No sir! At £20,000 he would definitely quit. And then . . .?

His mind full of lush dreams, the man on the motorcycle bumped his way as fast as he could across the plain – away from the great thorn bush where the pipeline for the richest smuggling operation in the world started its devious route to where it would finally gush out on to soft bosoms, five thousand miles away.

2

Gem Quality

‘Don’t push it in. Screw it in,’ said M impatiently.

James Bond, making a mental note to pass M’s dictum on to the Chief of Staff, again picked up the jeweller’s glass from the desk where it had fallen and this time managed to fix it securely into the socket of his right eye.

Although it was late July and the room was bright with sunshine, M had switched on his desk-light and tilted it so that it shone straight at Bond. Bond picked the brilliant-cut stone up and held it to the light. As he turned it between his fingers, all the colours of the rainbow flashed back at him from its mesh of facets until his eye was tired with the dazzle.

He took out the jeweller’s glass and tried to think of something appropriate to say.

M looked at him quizzically. ‘Fine stone?’

‘Wonderful,’ said Bond. ‘It must be worth a lot of money.’

‘A few pounds for the cutting,’ said M dryly. ‘It’s a bit of quartz. Now then, let’s try again.’ He consulted a list on the desk in front of him and selected a fold of tissue paper, verified the number written on it, unfolded it and pushed it across to Bond.

Bond put the piece of quartz back into its own wrapping and picked up the second sample.

‘It’s easy for you, sir,’ he smiled at M. ‘You’ve got the crib.’ He screwed the glass back into his eye and held the stone, if it was a stone, up to the light.

This time, he thought, there could be no doubt about it. This stone also had the thirty-two facets above and the twenty-four below of the brilliant-cut, and it was also about twenty carats, but what he now held had a heart of blue-white flame, and the infinite colours reflected and refracted from its depths lanced into his eye like needles. With his left hand he picked up the quartz dummy and held it beside the diamond in front of his glass. It was a lifeless chunk of matter, almost opaque beside the dazzling translucence of the diamond, and the rainbow colours he had seen a few minutes before were now coarse and muddy.

Bond put down the piece of quartz and gazed again into the heart of the diamond. Now he could understand the passion that diamonds had inspired through the centuries, the almost sexual love they aroused among those who handled them and cut them and traded in them. It was domination by a beauty so pure that it held a kind of truth, a divine authority before which all other material things turned, like the bit of quartz, to clay. In these few minutes Bond understood the myth of diamonds, and he knew that he would never forget what he had suddenly seen inside the heart of this stone.

He put the diamond down on its slip of paper and dropped the jeweller’s glass into the palm of his hand. He looked across into M’s watchful eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see.’

M sat back in his chair. ‘That’s what Jacoby meant when I had lunch with him the other day at the Diamond Corporation,’ he said. ‘He said that if I was going to get involved in the diamond business I ought to try and understand what was really at the bottom of it all. Not just the billions of money involved, or the value of diamonds as a hedge against inflation, or the sentimental fashions in diamonds for engagement rings and so forth. He said one must understand the passion for diamonds. So he just showed me what I’m showing you. And,’ M smiled thinly at Bond, ‘if it will give you any satisfaction, I was just as taken in by that bit of quartz as you were.’

Bond sat still and said nothing.

‘And now let’s run through the rest,’ said M. He gestured towards the pile of paper packets in front of him. ‘I said I’d like to borrow some samples. They didn’t seem to mind. Sent this lot round to my house this morning.’ M consulted his list, opened a packet and pushed it across to Bond. ‘What you were looking at just now was the best – a Fine Blue-white.’ He gestured towards the big diamond in front of Bond. ‘Now this is a Top Crystal, ten carats, baguette-cut. Very fine stone, but worth about half a Blue-white. You’ll see there’s the faintest trace of yellow in it. The Cape I’m going to show you next has a slight brownish tinge, according to Jacoby, but I’m damned if I can see it. I doubt if anyone can except the experts.’

Bond obediently picked up the Top Crystal and for the next quarter of an hour M led him through the whole range of diamonds down to a wonderful series of coloured stones, ruby red, blue, pink, yellow, green and violet. Finally, M pushed over a packet of smaller stones, all flawed or marked or of poor colour. ‘Industrial diamonds. Not what they call gem quality. Used in machine tools and so forth. But don’t despise them. America bought £5,000,000 worth of them last year, and that’s only one of the markets. Bronsteen told me it was stones like these that were used for cutting the St Gothard tunnel. At the other end of the scale, dentists use them for drilling your teeth. They’re the hardest substance in the world. Last forever.’

M pulled out his pipe and started to fill it. ‘And now you know as much about diamonds as I do.’

Bond sat back in his chair and gazed vaguely at the bits of tissue paper and glittering stones that lay scattered across the red leather surface of M’s desk. He wondered what it was all about.

There was the rasp of a match against a box and Bond watched M tamp the burning tobacco down in the bowl of his pipe and then put the matchbox back in his pocket and tilt his chair in M’s favourite attitude for reflection.

Bond glanced down at his watch. It was 11.30. Bond thought with pleasure of the IN tray piled with Top Secret dockets he had gladly abandoned when the red telephone had summoned him an hour before. He felt fairly confident that now he wouldn’t have to deal with them. ‘I guess it’s a job,’ the Chief of Staff had said in answer to Bond’s inquiry. ‘The Chief says he won’t take any more calls before lunch and he’s made an appointment for you at the Yard for two o’clock. Step on it.’ And Bond had reached for his coat and had gone into the outer office where he was pleased to see his secretary registering in another bulky file with a ‘Most Immediate’ tab.

‘M,’ said Bond as she looked up. ‘And Bill says it looks like a job. So don’t think you’re going to have the pleasure of shovelling that lot into my IN tray. You can post it off to the Daily Express for all I care.’ He grinned at her. ‘Isn’t that chap Sefton Delmer a boyfriend of yours, Lil? Just the stuff for him, I expect.’

Reviews for Diamonds Are Forever

[ghost_boy-691444 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

After reading Moonraker I was hoping this one didn't drag like the last books. This one was better then I thought. Not as good as Live and Let Die, but this one was interesting to me. The biggest reason I liked this was because I've actually been to Saratoga before. Never realized Bond had been up to Eastern United States before. The other thing I liked was the horse racing and auction scenes. Not a fan of either activity, jut nice to see something other then card playing.

In this book I liked the Bond Girl better then Moonraker. Tiffany Case to me had an easier name to remember and also a more clever one. She also had a better backup story as well. The Bond Villain in this one was a little confusing. He had several allies which made it good for a spy novel, but just ended up getting confused.

If you are a fan of the movies I highly recommend these novels. But try to read them in order and not in the movie order. Also be aware the movies aren't really like the novels. The are some similarities, but several differences.

[stahl2ricco · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

007 gets inserted into the diamond smuggling pipeline in this one. The pipeline coming from mines in Africa, into England (where Bond slips in) and then to the United States. Add Felix Leiter, and then shake things up, not stir! It's not the most exciting story, and the first hundred pages or so have very little action. But it revs up at the end and wraps up pretty satisfactorily! I'm curious to find out if Ms. Case is mentioned in the next book!“We’re both traveling bad roads and all bad roads lead to bad towns.” Which in this story means Las Vegas - ol’ Sin City itself!

[aadyer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Whilst this may not be Fleming strongest work, it does have his hallmarks of action, adventure, pacing, and a cartoonish sense of fun. This is James Bond versus the American gangster genre. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler would’ve done this proud. Tiffany case is a more interesting bongo than we’ve seen for some time and her backstory makes her the typical born girl with a huge degree of emotional hurts.Unfortunately Flemings rather limited understanding of emotional connection becomes very evident here. The chapters and sections that are related to when bond and Tiffany become a couple are nauseatingly naive and unpleasant. I think if you can get past those and accept this is a tiny part of the book, you will enjoy that.

[ekerstein-986148 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In Bond's latest adventure, he goes undercover in the US to infiltrate a diamond-smuggling group. Personally, I didn't find this book as interesting as the others. The plot wasn't organized around a central mystery, like Moonraker, for example, so I think it lacked some of the propulsion that one wants in a good novel.

[tomdonaghey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Diamonds Are Forever (1956) (Bond #4) by Ian Fleming. This is one of the lesser Bond outings. Sent to uncover and destroy a diamond smuggling operation, Bond must work his way into the good graces of his contact, Tiffany Case. Together they are to smuggle a grouping of diamonds into the U.S. Along the way he meets some interesting characters including a diabolical duo of killers who mask their true identities. In doing so, they keep their features hidden from the world, including Bond.While the story is a competent one, I find the process flawed. The story is about rich people keeping their riches while those who work for them are kept as near prisoners. I don’t know how much has changed over the years but I assume there isn’t a great difference in how the workers are treated. So much suffering inflicted so a few people can fill their bank accounts.And Bond, as usual, is merely a tool the powerful use to keep their positions.

[johnfishlock · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My favorite of the series so far. 4.4 Some similarities to the movie which is one of my favorites also despite the quality of the acting in certain scenes.

[paul_s-289480 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

These books are like themed roller-coaster rides. Short, gratifying, zooming all over the place but not mentally engaging. The kill rate has climbed up and it's as if Bond is slowly realising he's unkillable. One interesting thing is the continuity across books.

[ecataldi-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Quite different than the movie, and filled with sexist, racist, and homophobic content. However, this was written in the fifties so I won't judge it through today's lens. Plot wise - I thought there would be much more about the diamonds, but really James Bond is seeing how far down the criminal pipeline he can go. They're pretty sure the source of illegal diamonds is from French Guinea (or around there) and they know they end up in America. It's up to Bond to pose as one of the low level carriers and see how far on the criminal trail he can get. His new job takes him to New York, Saratoga, and Vegas. These American mobsters are more methodical and organized than he gave them credit for and it's not as easy as a job as he assumed it would be. Lots of action, intrigue, some sex appeal, and unique villains. Classic James Bond.

[mstrust · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Bond is shimmied into a diamond smuggling ring, taking the place of the man who carries the diamonds from London to New York City, where he meets the bosses. Believing Bond to be a new recruit, he's sent to Saratoga Springs to collect his fee at the horseraces, where he gets involved in race fixing. From there, he's sent to Las Vegas to cheat at cards, all the while being watched by his new employers.

[bcrowl399 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm reading these books in order and they are getting progressively more disturbing. Ian Fleming is a powerful author. The movies, while entertaining, don't always do the stories justice.

[lamour_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Bond is assigned to follow a diamond smuggling ring from London to theUSA to find out who is organizing it. Part way along, he decides to speed things up by disobeying his Mafia handlers which almost gets him killed a number of times. After the deaths of six gangsters, he stops the diamond trafficking from Africa to New York and Las Vegas plus rescues a very beautiful woman from a life of crime.It has been years since I last read a Bond novel but still found it a fast and fun read.

[booksfordinner · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of two Bond books I read on the beach in Cancun over the holidays this year. Always a great time. The movies are fun of course, but the novels are more enjoyable for me. The usual Fleming issues are here—sometimes sub-par dialogue, period racism, ridiculous American characters—but he was a tremendous describer of things and places and people. Not as great as others, but still much fun.

[joekingman-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Diamonds, a fixed horse race,Las Vegas, the mob, a steam locomotive, and of course, Bond.

[benuathanasia · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another excellent Bond novel. His American friend seemed a bit out of place, but it WAS nice to see James relying on and trusting another wholeheartedly. Another layer of humanity for the ubermensch alpha male.

[michael5rimmer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

More a gangster caper than Bond's usual espionage work, but still a good read. Nice appearance by Felix Leiter, looking more like a Bond-villain's henchman from one of the films than one of Bond's most trusted allies.I wonder whether 'Spectreville' has any significance for the later stories?

[antiquary_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Although he is normally a spy, Bond is sent undercover smuggling diamonds from Africa for American gangsters. Much of the book takes place in the western US.

[ptdilloway-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Kind of a nondescript entry in the series. Bond vs. smugglers with a lot of help from Felix Leiter and Tiffany Case.

[lizajane38 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is my 4th Bond book this year (working on reading all of them). I've read reviews that call Fleming a sexist and a racist. I have to disagree on both counts. Racial issues are not really relevant in this story, but there is a "Bond girl" in every story. Fleming spend a fair amount of time describing these women. They are strong, beautiful and independent and Bond has feelings for each of them. They are very different from the women in the movies.

That said, I enjoyed this book as much as the first 3. The action is tense and the descriptions are spot on.

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This 4th entry in the James Bond series is still a good thriller but suffers in places from its age (originally published in 1956). For example, Bond smuggles a gun into the US by just wearing it in an underarm holster when he flies over from England - back then there was no such thing as airport security or metal detectors. His attitude about organized crime in America is also a product of the 50s and was a more serious irritant to this modern reader. However, Bond as a character continues to be more interesting and more human than he was in the movies. And who knew that he was actually falling in love with all those girls?!

[clark7hallman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Diamonds Are Forever, first published in 1956, was the fourth James Bond novel written by Ian Fleming. James Bond is a British Secret Service agent in the MI6 (Military Intelligence, Section 6) agency that deals with foreign intelligence. In this novel James Bond (007) goes undercover to investigate a diamond-smuggling operation moving uncut diamonds from Sierra Leone to the United States. It turns out that the smuggling is headed by two mobsters, the Spang brothers. Bond infiltrates the smuggling ring and a beautiful woman (Tiffany Case) is his first contact on the job. Eventually Bond meets the mob bosses, learns about their fixed horse racing game in Saratoga, and then their completely corrupt gambling environment in Las Vegas. He also uncovers the details of their diamond smuggling activities. Of course, he blows his cover and violence and death ensue. Even so, Bond manages to enjoy his relationship with Tiffany. This book has the usual high-living, high-glamour, high-crime milieus that are part of the 007 genre. It also has the requisite violence and heroic actions by Bond that is expected by Fleming’s fans. I enjoyed this novel very much, even though I had previously read four other James Bond novels by Fleming and I have seen most of the movies. I saw the Diamonds Are Forever movie a very long time ago and I must confess that I don’t remember much about it. Anyway, I highly recommend that reading these books is worthwhile even if you have seen the movies. If you really want to know James Bond, you should consult his creator by reading the Ian Fleming books. However don’t expect that these books can match the explosive special effects that recent 007 movies provide.

[bridgey_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Diamonds are Forever - Ian Fleming ****Bond's fourth outing under the pen of Ian Fleming has found him investigating a diamond smuggling pipeline. In order to find the source Bond must pose as a gang employee, working undercover where he must fool everyone, even the beautiful Tiffany Case. Although the bad guys are not as memorable as say Goldfinger, or Hugo Drax we meet the brilliantly named Shady Tree and the duo Kidd & Wint.There is a fairly distinct lack of action in the first half of the book, and once again there is not a lot of a resemblance to the film. When the action does come though it is thick and fast. We see a much more tender side to Bond than film goers would be used to. This is not a womanising secret agent but rather a man who will allow the right woman close to him. A welcome return comes in the form of the previously 'at deaths door' Felix Leiter.All in all a good novel with a relatively sound plot. It has left me wanting more Bond, although I can't help wishing that a few gadgets would make an appearance in the books as well as the films.

[leischen_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Below average Bond. Action is surprisingly low in this one. Bond takes on the Spangled Mob who M thinks may be more dangerous than the Russians. M would be wrong on that count, There may be mobsters tougher than SMERSH but it ain't the Spangs. Bond follows a smuggling operation to a colorless Vegas where the bad guys dress as cowbys and beat him up.The action peters out about 3/4 of the way through the book.

[duffdaddy-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

British Secret Service agent James Bond, 007 is sent on an assignment by his superior, M. Acting on information received from Special Branch, M tasks Bond with infiltrating a smuggling ring running diamonds from mines in Sierra Leone to the United States. Bond must travel as far as possible down the pipeline to uncover those responsible. Using the identity of Peter Franks, a country house burglar turned diamond smuggler, he meets Tiffany Case, an attractive go-between who developed an antipathy towards men after being gang-raped as a teenager.Bond discovers that the smuggling ring is operated by "The Spangled Mob", a ruthless American gang run by the brothers Jack and Seraffimo Spang. Bond follows the pipeline from London to New York, where he is instructed by Shady Tree to earn his fee through betting on a rigged horse race in nearby Saratoga. At Saratoga Bond meets Felix Leiter, a former CIA agent working at Pinkertons as a private detective investigating crooked horse racing. Leiter bribes the jockey to ensure the failure of the plot to rig the race. When Bond goes to pay the bribe, he witnesses two homosexual thugs, Wint and Kidd, attack the jockey.Bond calls Shady Tree to enquire further about the payment of his fee and is told to go to the Tiara Hotel in Las Vegas. The Tiara is owned by Seraffimo Spang and operates as the headquarters of the Spangled Mob. Spang also owns an old Western ghost town, named "Spectreville", restored to be his own private vacation retreat. At the hotel, Bond finally receives payment through a rigged blackjack game where the dealer is Tiffany Case. However, he disobeys his orders by continuing to gamble in the casino after "winning" the money he is owed. Spang suspects that Bond may be a 'plant' and has him captured and tortured. However, with Tiffany's help he escapes from Spectreville aboard a railway push-car with Seraffimo Spang in pursuit aboard an old Western train. Bond re-routs the train to a side line and shoots Spang before the resulting crash. Assisted by Leiter, Bond and Case go via California to New York, where they board the Queen Elizabeth to travel to London. However, Wint and Kidd observe their embarkation and followed them on board. They kidnap Case, planning to kill her and throw her overboard. Bond rescues her and kills both gangsters; for precaution, he makes it look like a murder-suicide.Case subsequently informs Bond of the details of the pipeline. It begins in Africa where a dentist would pay miners to smuggle diamonds in their mouths which he would extract during a routine appointment. From there the dentist would take the diamonds and rendezvous with a German helicopter pilot. Eventually the diamonds would go to Paris, and from there to London. There, after telephone instructions from a contact known as ABC, Case would then meet a person to explain how to smuggle the diamonds to New York City. After returning to London, Bond flies on to Freetown in Sierra Leone and then to where the next diamond rendezvous takes place. With the collapse of the rest of the pipeline, Jack Spang (who turns out to be the mysterious ABC) shuts down his diamond smuggling pipeline by killing its participants. Spang himself is killed when Bond shoots down his helicopter.

[comfypants · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The first half of the book is essentially James Bond On Vacation, and is extremely boring. Eventually we find out that Bond is just as bored as we are, and he decides to do something about it. Once the action gets going, it's very good.

[jmaloney17 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is one of the original James Bond stories. I love the movies and own them all. The book is very different, which is not at all surprising. I still enjoyed it. I do intend on rewatching the movie soon, so I can better see the differences between the two. It has been awhile since I watched this particular movie.

[brettjames · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A good romp, for sure. Fleming, bored with spies, sends Bond after American gangsters. The results are mixed, as Fleming doesn't manage any depth to the bad guys. Still, the description of a trans-Atlantic flight in 1956 is worth the price of admission.

[bnielsen_30 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

En forbryderbande, hvis leder kalder sig A B C, smugler diamanter ud fra en britisk ejet mine i Sydafrika. James Bond sættes på sagen. Kriminalkommisær Vallance fra Special Branch, som Bond kender fra sagen om Tordenkilen, hjælper Bond med at træde ind i stedet for den kurer, der skulle smugle en ladning diamanter til USA. Felix Leiter er tilbage (efter et møde med nogle hajer) men med en ødelagt arm og ditto ben. Han er nu ansat ved Pinkerton, men hjælper Bond flere gange undervejs. En pige, Tiffany Case, er med på banditternes side i starten, men Bond vinder hende over på sin side og så får banditterne bank.Banden hedder Spang banden, fordi den ledes af to brødre, der hedder Spang. Bond smugler diamanterne til USA og får betaling via et tip til et fikset hestevæddeløb. Felix Leiter får jockeyen til at fikse det tilbage igen, men det opdager banden og så får både jockeyen og Bond problemer. Jockeyen bliver forsøgt myrdet med skoldhed mudder og Bond bortføres til bandens mærkelige skjulested, Spectreville. Han klarer på trods af en solid gennembankning at flygte og undervejs i flugten dræber han den ene bror, Seraffimo Spang. Tiffany og Bond tager nu med Queen Elizabeth til Europa. To homoseksuelle lejemordere Wint og Kidd forsøger at dræbe Case ombord på atlanterhavsdamperen, men Bond dræber i stedet dem. Da broderen er død, begynder den anden, A B C, eller Rufus B Saye eller Jack Spang, at lukke diamantrørledningen, men han bliver fundet af Bond og dræbt med en Bofors luftværnskanon..Nogenlunde god kriminalroman med hovedformålet at få Bond til USA i nogle maleriske omgivelser

[zare_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[jbreedlove_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another good Bond book. A human, beaten but tough and persevering spy in the wilds of southern Nevada of the early 1950's. Again not the cartoonish Sean Connery. When reading these books I think of the newer blonder less suave Bond.

[tootstorm · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The fourth novel of Fleming's series of James Bond adventures, Diamonds are Forever is generally regarded to be the biggest flop of the early stories, one of the weaker entries in the Bondverse. It's easy to see why: the story itself is Bond going to America undercover, to investigate the Spangled mob and the diamond-smuggling network reaching from Africa to England to the US, because Her Majesty's country is losing money from diamonds being stolen and smuggled from their territory of French Guinea (which became just Guinea 2 years after the book's publication! Wow! So interesting!). Now, after Bond stopped London from the effects of the world's most powerful nuclear missile, and battled the menacing figure of Mr. BIG/Baron Samedi, going up against the mob doesn't seem like much...and it ain't. Two other common complaints with DAF is that Bond travels between too many locations too fast (French Guinea->London->New York->Saratoga->Las Vegas->Spectreville (ghost town)->Los Angeles->cruise ship->F. Guinea--and it's one of the shorter Bond novels), and similarly, there are simply too many villains being introduced, all typical of Fleming's style, and by that I mean that they're...just...strange. Oh, yeah, Bond also says "shaken, not stirred" for the first time here. I had been starting to think that the famous Bond lines were made up for the films strictly.Diamonds are Forever overall has a more typical noir pulp feel to it, partly due to the lack of a supervillain, and the inclusion of the Pinkertons helping out. Felix Leiter returns to lend his helpful claw to Bond, and has left the CIA and become a Pinkerton man, working as a PI for them. We're also rewarded with one of, I think, the best Bond girls. Tiffany Case! The bond between these two cats feels a little more genuine here (but only a little), and Tiffany is also more fleshed out as a character than what we're used to.The leading villain of the adventure doesn't make much of an appearance. Only for a brief scene near the beginning, and to die in the last chapter. The Spangled mob is led by the brothers Spang, this man just mentioned and his brother operating from Las Vegas, and the book's biggest detractor. He's just too silly. He dresses up as a classic cowboy, and likes to spend his weekends running a train out of a ghost town he bought, which of course Bond has to go to. Everything related to this Cowboy Man was just too ridiculous for me. The football-torture scene had me just thinking "what? stupid." Despite the surrounding silliness of this particular brother Spang, the Las Vegas (keep in mind: it's the '50s!) and mud bath and cruise scenes have provided some of the best Bond sequences yet. And the reunion of Bond and Leiter is classic.Overall, a step down, but only barely, from the last two. Still a worthwhile read.F.V.: 70%[583]