The name is Bond, James Bond, that highbrow agent of the British secret service, as suave and stalwart as he is sex-charged, a cold-hearted holder of his government's license to kill. Since his creation some five decades ago, Bond has lured readers and movie audiences on improbable but thrilling adventures as he seeks to save society from evildoers of epic proportions.

His creator was Fleming, Ian Fleming, a British blueblood who had to work for a living, a one-time banker and now and again journalist. Out of his own self-embellished experiences as a war-time lieutenant in naval intelligence, Fleming crafted, from 1954 until his death ten years later, fourteen books featuring Bond, to whom he lent his high-society tastes and hard-drinking, womanizing ways. "James Bond is simply Ian Fleming day-dreaming in the third person," assessed biographer John Pearson, quoted in a Forbes retrospective by Anthony Weller.

Named plainly for...