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From Russia With Love (James Bond Adventure Ser)
by Ian Fleming (Reader: John Kenneth)
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Paperback Nova Audio Books (2000-08-15)
ISBN: 1587881098
EAN: 9781587881091
Dewy Decimal #: 813
Audio Cassette
Edition: Abridged
Release Date: 2000-08-15
SKU: GD120133a
Condition: Used: Like New
Comments: Abridged - 2 audio cassettes with 3 hours playing time. In original plastic case.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
SMERSH is the Soviet organ of vengeance: of interrogation, torture and death. James Bond is dedicated to the destruction of its agents wherever he finds them.
Then SMERSH focuses on Bond and, far away in Moscow, a trap is laid for him - a death trap with an enticing lure.
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Customer Reviews
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Chess Match Turns Deadly For 007
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-07-30
Though it ends with as sharp a period as any Ian Fleming ever made, the operative punctuation in 1957's "From Russia, With Love" is found in its very title, a comma. "From Russia" is not an end but a turning, from the lighter Bond adventures Fleming penned at the start of the series toward twistier, more complex yarns.
It's also one of the most captivating of Bond stories. It opens with an image of a well-built naked man lying face-down on a rose-hedged lawn. He looks dead but is very much alive, dangerously so, as we discover. Red Grant is not only powerful, he is madly homicidal, a combination that endears him to his Soviet masters. Grant's latest assignment, part of a larger operation to embarrass the British secret service, involves the killing of one of only three Britishers who hold the dread double-0 distinction and thus is kind of Grant's opposite number: 007.
"English spies we have captured speak highly of the man", one Soviet spymaster notes. "He is certainly much admired in his Service. He is said to be a lone wolf, but a very good-looking one."
To demoralize the British and reverse a string of losses, head Soviet spykiller General G. commands Bond not only be killed, but "killed with IGNOMINY". Enter Tatiana Romanova, a beautiful, mild-mannered government clerk who becomes both pawn and queen in the chess game against Bond.
The build-up is great, and once Bond enters the scene, like a matador the last to enter the bullring, Fleming kicks the story into an even higher gear. Buying the cover story that Tatiana has fallen in love with him from a file photo and wants to give him a secret Russian decoder, Bond travels to Istanbul and meets Darko Karim, the British secret service's chief Turkish ally. Fleming bathes us in atmosphere, and takes us from a gypsy catfight to a nighttime assassination to a hotel-room seduction in a classic example of "the Fleming Sweep."
"Near the airport a dog barked excitedly at an unknown human smell," Fleming writes. "Bond suddenly realized that he had come into the East where the guard-dog howls all night. For some reason the realization sent a pang of pleasure and excitement into his heart."
"From Russia, With Love" may well be Fleming at his least politically correct. Tatiana is little more than a plaything, while Darko Karim regales Bond with his un-Western notions of romancing a woman, which involves chaining her to a wall and feeding her table scraps until she falls in love with him. But this is part of "Russia's" dark charm, presenting such awful ideas so palatably in the form of Karim, one of the best characters in the 007 series with his fatalistic charm and suavity.
"Russia" comes up short only in the adventure department, with Bond little more of an active player here than he was in "Diamonds Are Forever" and getting a ludicrously detailed rundown of the enemy plot before his "liquidation". The ending is definitely improvable (and was in the subsequent screen adaptation, the best of all the Bond movies).
I'd call the earlier "Casino Royale" and later "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" the best Bond novels, but "Russia" lays down the groundwork of the entire 007 concept with unrivaled drama and passion. It can be seen today as the moment when James Bond went from diverting pulp fiction to essential cultural touchstone.
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IAN FLEMING'S BEST 007
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-07-12
Bond's revival is in high gear. QUANTUM of SOLACE is to be released on/near USA-election day 2008(solace is well what US electorate may need);teaser-trailers thus far released are spectacular(outdoing CASINO ROYALE).
Fleming novels(another reincarnation~Devil May Care,by Sebastian BIRDSONG Faulks,is presently in circulation to very mixed reviews)are getting deserved literary exhumation. First~Ian Fleming was an excellent thriller writer.(Only his last effort~THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN disappoints).Second~ there is more verisimilitude in these
(pulp)thrillers ...Ian Fleming used to knock-them-off at Goldeneye,
Jamaica in a month...than anointed literati ever credited. Fleming...unlike Le Carre whose TINKER,TAILOR SOLDIER,SPY might be best spy-genre novel in English, but even his later work--beginning with THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL--suffers from left-leaning political whining...did not attempt to write literature. In tradition of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes,and Sax Rhomer's Dr.Fu-Manchu,he wrote(what would become)mythological adventures.JAMES BOND...to all but most ignorant or pretentious literary "critics"...is now recognized as canonized mythical hero in Western tradition of Hercules,King Arthur,Superman and others among HERO(s)WITH A THOUSAND FACES...
Third~Fleming's best:they're consistently good to excellent(& fun as hell).IMO,FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE is his masterpiece-not-manque. Rosa Klebb is among the vilest,most memorable villains in lit hist. She ranks down there with Lady Macbeth and Madame Defarge(whom Fleming references in description of this sexually perverted murderess).Red Grant...KGB assassin...is the most evil/accomplished,sociopathic killer to precede Hannibal Lector. Plot is fast moving(and believable:MOGULS of DEATH~the Cheka-Stalinists and their heirs are still murderous and power mad). The geographical sweep/vista of FRwL is THRILLING CITIES accurate and exciting.And Romanova,SMERSH's "Honey Trap-Mata Harri"clone(poised to seduce Bond) is ultra-non-plus tOO7 deadly.
Fourth~Climax to FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE is startling and unsurpassed in BOND canon and much of thriller mythology.If you intend to read only one JAMES BOND,007 adventure,accept my--and many reviewers--recommendation:
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE is For Your Eyes Only,License-to-Kill it(007stars)
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Unexpected and Fun
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-04-22
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
They couldn't write a book like this today. For example, the main character--Bond--doesn't even show up until page 123! The entire first third of the book is a detailed following of the villains plotting Bond's death. It's not until we get to the execution that we meet James Bond.
Be that as it may, I found it to be an interesting change of pace, and I was never bored. There is more espionage than action, but when the fighting occurs, it is quick and brutal. Fleming can make you cringe with his viscious descriptions of down-and-dirty combat.
Aside from the lengthy intro without Bond, the movie version seems to have followed the book rather closely (especially compared to some others). However, the Bond of the books is a different man than the Bond of the movies. He's fallible, and prone to getting his heart broken. This, I like. But as another reviewer mentioned, he makes some pretty serious mistakes that nearly cost him his life. It can be hard to root for him as a secret agent at times like this. Still, I do.
And, at least once in each Fleming Bond novel, there seems to be something "inappropriate" by today's standards. This is half the fun of reading them. (In "From Russia With Love," Tania asks Bond to beat her if she overeats and gets fat, and Bond readily agrees. Hilarious!)
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Entertaining and interesting action.
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-03-20
This is one of my favorites! Author Fleming has an interesting style all his own- he is very creative when it comes to his description of characters and gadgets. It is a little quirky and kinky in parts. That seems odd and out of place, but it is a really fun story.
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Great book-Makes me want to read more Fleming
Rating  (4)
Date: 2007-12-10
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
I am not a big spy novel reader. But, I had heard that the Bond novels were a great read. I was not disappointed. Fleming's writing style is excellent. The word that comes to my mind to describe the style is smooth. Unlike the Bond movies, the action is delayed until the middle of the book, which creates exciting tension. I think I will try some of the other Bond books and see some of the movies again.
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