He practically describes what happens on every hole along the course. Fleming has vividly described card games in these books before, but going into such detail about a golf game is just insufferable. Then there’s that interminable golf game. It’s lazy plotting from someone who usually knows better.

All throughout the book, things are happening by coincidence. Conveniently, Goldfinger had invited Bond to play golf with him to get revenge for busting up his card scheme (coincidence #3). When Bond gets back to MI6 he is assigned to investigate none other than Auric Goldfinger, who is suspected of smuggling stolen gold and using large amounts of it to fund SMERSH’s evil operations. Bond helps foil the cheating scheme and gets Goldfinger to repay all of his winnings. It just so happens that the cheater in question is Auric Goldfinger, the richest man in England. He runs into one of the men who was at the baccarat table with Bond in Casino Royale (coincidence #1), and when their flight is canceled (coincidence #2), the man invites Bond back to his hotel to help him determine if a guest there has been cheating him in cards (been there, done that). You see, in the opening of Goldfinger Bond is on his way back to England, morosely pondering the implications of having a license to kill after a messy job in Mexico City. This isn’t the first time Bond unknowingly met the bad guy before he was supposed to investigate him–that already happened in Moonraker when M asked Bond to accompany him to his club to determine if Hugo Drax was cheating at cards (the very next day Bond was sent to investigate the murder of one of Drax’s employees). Plus, there are passages that are just plain offensive.įor starters, the plot relies far too heavily on coincidences. Fleming churned one book out every year once he started writing about 007’s adventures in 1953 so it was really just a matter of time before he repurposed some of his set-ups and concocted a diabolical scheme that was far too complicated (and full of holes) for its own good. Here we have it: the first Bond book by Ian Fleming that I actively disliked. I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later.

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