Ian Fleming, From Russia With Love (1957)Read about another entry on the list.
Occasionally, perhaps often, a Bond film improves on a Bond book. More often they just ignore everything but the title. The film of Goldfinger, for example, neatly circumvents the impossibility of making off with the loot from Fort Knox by introducing an atom bomb—“I prefer to think of it as a device.” From Russia with Love is probably one of the least changed in the transition to film. Swap SMERSH for SPECTRE, but the Orient Express and the thoroughly captivating, thoroughly wicked Rosa Kleb remain as stars.
From Russia with Love also made Sinclair McKay's five best list of books on ciphers and codebreakers during World War II and after, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best housekeepers in literature, ten of the best chess games in fiction, ten of the best punch-ups in fiction, and ten of the best breakfasts in literature, and a list of eleven presidents' favorite books. It is on Keith Jeffery's five best list of books on Britain's Secret Service and Samuel Muston's ten best list of spy novels.
--Marshal Zeringue
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