10 of the Greatest Cold War Spy Novels
“Though Ian Fleming himself had worked in intelligence during the Second World War, James Bond was a fantasy figure in the tradition of Bulldog Drummond, the Saint, and Mike Hammer, and Fu Manchu provided the pattern for Bond’s uber-foes (specifically, in the case of Dr. No, 1962). But in this, his fifth Bond novel, Fleming plays a straight espionage game, with Russia’s counter-intelligence agency SMERSH out to kill Bond in the context of a contrived sexual scandal. The first section of the novel depicts the planning of the mission and the training of Soviet assassin Red Grant. The 1963 film version with Sean Connery is the most faithful of Bond adaptations, rivaled only by On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) and Casino Royale (2006).”