Mr. Ian Fleming's latest thriller [From Russia With Love] will be another shot in the arm for addicts, and it would be unfair to him and them to reveal the plot beyond saying that its author has undoubtedly studied Sherlock Holmes and that a lot of it takes place in Istanbul. These new surroundings, however, bring with them no slackening of tension. Perhaps we could have done without the conducted tour of the Russian Secret Service which Mr. Fleming provides in his early chapters, but guns and knives are used freely later on, and there are plenty of those little touches, so revelatory of character, which Bond's fans have learned to look for….
For, after all, the strength of these thrillers lies in the man Bond. Mr. Fleming's plots have deteriorated a good deal since Casino Royale. He now no longer even tries to obtain from his readers that willing suspension of disbelief which we accord so readily to Eric Ambler. In the Amberland south of the Danube and east of the Adriatic his local colour stands up particularly badly to the comparison. I never feel that Mr. Fleming really knows what it is like to beard a Macedonian Komitadji in his den, and the political background of his novels is not so much shaky as non-existent….
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