Story Synopsis James Bond makes his first excursion into the United States to work with the American government, in particular with Felix Leiter of the CIA. The assignment is to find the source of contraband gold coins being used to finance SMERSH operations. The villain of the book, Mr. Big, is a black American trained by both the OSS and the Russians with seemingly unlimited resources of money and manpower. Shortly after his arrival in the States, 007 is spotted by Mr. Big. In his first night in a New York hotel, 007 receives a mysterious package which turns out to be a low-grade bomb used as a "visiting card" by Mr. Big warning Bond that his "heartbeats are numbered." Leiter and Bond begin their investigation by going to Harlem nightspots searching for the elusive Mr. Big. At every turn, they are tracked and their movements reported to Mr. Big by a network of waiters, loungers, patrons, and hired hands of the criminal leader. At one club, the stripper is about to take it all off as the lights go out and the table at which Bond and Leiter are sitting suddenly is lowered through a trap door and they find themselves prisoners of Mr. Big. Bond, under questioning, says that he is a British agent looking into the smuggling of coins into the UK and US with the help of Leiter "of the U.S.Treasury." Mr. Big knows Leiter is CIA but brings in a clairvoyant, the beautiful Solitaire, to assess the truth of Bond's statements. She says he is telling the truth and Bond senses he has an ally in Solitaire. Nevertheless, Mr. Big has Bond's finger broken as a warning. Bond escapes and kills several of Mr. Big's goons. At his hotel, he receives a call from Solitaire asking him to help her escape the clutches of Mr. Big who has held her a virtual prisoner. Bond arranges to meet her on a train to Florida where he is heading to pursue a lead that Mr. Big runs his smuggling ring through St. Petersburg. As they travel south, a porter warns 007 that there is going to be trouble on the train. Bond and Solitaire slip off the train and transfer to a different one to continue the trip. (Later he finds that his compartment was blasted and the porter killed.) Meeting Leiter in Florida, the three take refuge in a small cottage on the Gulf of Mexico. Solitaire stays behind while Leiter and Bond go to investigate Ourobouros Bait Company, Mr. Big's cover enterprise. Unfortunately, the man who manages the scheme is armed and threatens the two agents who are forced to back down. Returning to the cottage, they find that Solitaire has been kidnapped. Not being able to do anything that night, an exhausted Bond retires. The next morning he finds that Leiter had gone back to Ourobouros alone and was thrown into a shark tank and left near death. Bond returns at night and slips into the bait building and finds the gold coins hidden under the sand in tanks of poisonous fish. He also has a gunfight with manager who ends up in the shark tank. Bond continues the search for Mr. Big in Jamaica. In Jamaica, 007 learns that Morgan's pirate gold was buried on Surprise Island and a large yacht, the Secatur, has been making runs from the island to Havana. He gets equipment for an undersea exploration of the island and gains a backup person, the Jamaican named Quarrel. For a time, Quarrel helps Bond train for the mission while they monitor the movements of the Secatur. Finally, 007 makes an underwater trip with SCUBA gear the hull of the yacht where he attaches a mine with a seven-hour fuse. Being attacked by a large barracuda, Bond escapes to an undersea cave that leads inside the island. Once inside, he is captured and brought to a cell where he is tied to Solitaire while Mr. Big's toughs finish loading the last of Morgan's treasure aboard the Secatur. Finally, to finish of Bond and Solitaire, Mr. Big has them tied behind the yacht to be dragged over the reef and flayed into shark meal. As the boat approaches the reef area, the mine 007 had attached explodes killing all on board. Bond and Solitaire are rescued by Quarrel and the book ends with them going for a recuperative period in a "house on stilts with palm trees and five miles of golden sand." Review Live and Let Die is a typical Fleming book. It has all the elements: mystery, a super villain, a desirable beauty, pain, and Fleming's inclination to pass on (possibly recently learned) information on a variety of subjects. In this case, through Bond's reading, we learn a great deal about voodoo practices. Fleming describes evil spirits, charms, spells, and voodoo groups. Additionally, he details a sacrificial rite that Bond is glad to put aside and "reenter the world of normality." Perhaps of more interest is the insight we get of Fleming's reaction to the life of the retirees in Florida. It is definitely not something that appealed to him given his descriptions of the people, their recreation, where they lived, and how they ate. We hear the words from Solitaire's mouth as she explains St. Petersburg to 007, but behind her words one cannot help but feel Fleming's apparent distaste for the culture of the "oldsters." It's a revealing view of one segment of American life as perceived by a British writer. I think Fleming had more fun with a different aspect of American culture, writing in the black dialect of Harlem. In one scene, he had Bond shamelessly eavesdropping on an innocent couple in a Harlem nightclub. It could not have been easy for someone who was not raised in the States to be able to get the cadence, pronunciation, and word choice of such foreign sounds to his ears. But if he were to give credence to Mr. Big's henchmen, he had to do it right to avoid making them sound like cardboard characters. (Oddly, Mr. Big had no distinguishing accent.) On the other side of the "accent" coin, he had Bond getting the lesson on how to sound American and avoid saying things like "ectually." In any case, I think he thoroughly enjoyed playing with language in Live and Let Die. Copyright © 1999, 2000 Ray Dempsey