Summary- James Bond has returned from his vacation following the Moonraker assignment. He has only been back for two weeks when he is called into M's office. Apparently, a diamond smuggling ring has been discovered that is costing England millions a year. It starts in the French Guinea, goes through London and ends up in America. Bond is asked to pose as Peter Franks, a small part of the diamond smuggling "pipeline". His goal is to trace the start of the pipeline back to the mysterious "ABC" in London, who seems to be running the entire operation. Bond meets up with Tiffany Case, another link in the chain, and heads to America with thousands of dollars of diamonds hidden in his golf balls. The trail leads immediately to Mike "Shady" Tree, who seems to be the very end of the pipeline. It is he who cuts the raw diamonds and then sells them in his legitimate diamond store. However, Bond finds that the trail leads to The Spangled Gang, run by the two Spang brothers. Bond, with a little help from his old pal Felix Leiter and Ms. Tiffany Case, Bond works his way through the pipeline, until he finally kills "ABC", who turns out to be one of the Spang brothers. My Grade- B This novel has almost the feel of a mystery novel about it. All of the Bond novels I have read so far have questions that have to be answered, but the way in which Bond works his way through the pipeline, putting together the pieces of the puzzle goes beyond that. Of course, there is absolutely no lack of action, and the novel grabs ones attention and keeps it. Best Moment- The best moment of this novel by far is the return of Felix Leiter. Leiter has always been one of my favorite characters from the movies, and he is even better in the novels. After he was fed to the sharks in Flemings second novel, I was devastated that Leiter wouldn't be around in any of the future novels. I guess I was just naive. We see his return in this novel, and it is great. The movies wrote him out after the shark attack, never giving the chance to see how he ends up. (Except for an extremely brief shot of him in a hospital bed.) In DAF, Leiter returns as the audience of the movies have never seen him. He has a hook for his right arm, and an artificial left leg, but he hasn't let that slow him down in the least. He still kicks ass, and pulls James' ass out of the fire. Also Notable- I really like one of the very last lines of this novel. Bond is reflecting of the players he met while working his way down the diamond smuggling pipeline. He counts seven, almost all of whom tried to kill him. Then he reflects that he killed most of them: "Six corpses to zero. Game, set, match."
