In The Man with the Golden Gun, Bond is sent to confront a celebrated gun man and killer in Central and South America. Change the facts in this story just a little and this could have been set in 1870 and in the American west. Bond’s CIA friend Felix Leiter laments that romantics killed a criminal and then made him a hero. Historians can note the legends of Billy the Kid and Jesse James. Fleming’s 1950-60s gunman is Francisco Scaramanga – as scary a villain as any he’s written in the past.

Fleming, Ian; Gammidge, Henry; McLusky, John (1988). Octopussy. London: Titan Books. ISBN 1-85286-040-5. The ending is...it's...epic. Titanic. So awful, so ridiculous, so completely...I...words do not exist yet for the sensation of revolted, horrified, amused, aesthetically affronted...well. Zelger, Henry A. (1965). Ian Fleming: The Spy Who Came in with the Gold. New York City: Duell, Sloan and Pearce. ASIN B0007G5PR0.

Lesson Plan

In mid-assignment, Bond, who has managed to become Scaramanga's temporary personal assistant under the name of Mark Hazard, learns that Scaramanga is involved with a syndicate of American gangsters and the KGB, who are working several schemes, including the destabilization of Western interests in the Caribbean sugar industry, running drugs into America, smuggling women from Mexico into America and launching casinos in Jamaica. Initially unaware of Bond's presence in Jamaica, Felix Leiter has also been recalled to duty by the CIA and assigned to Scaramanga's hotel staff.

Bond's old friend Felix Leiter of the CIA shows up on this mission. It's always great to see Bond and Leiter interact, they are dear friends.

Study Pack

Of all the doom-fraught graffiti a woman can write on the wall, those are the most insidious, the most deadly.