Diamonds Are Forever

Diamonds Are Forever suffers from being too short. James Bond spends the majority of the book infiltrating the diamond-smuggling operation of part of the US Mafia and getting inside the operations of said Mafia, then no sooner is he inside he gets himself found out, has a fight, then another fight and that is the end. The ending to me seemed rather hurried and forced, as if Ian Fleming was not allowed to exceed a certain number of pages. Which is a great pity as the event leading up to the ending are certainly full of high intrigue and drama, even if you know rather obviously that James Bond isn't going to get killed (unless the series takes a strange sci-fi twist in the future). It's not to say that the final part of the book is poorly written or dull - it's not, what with the menace of the briefcase emblazoned "My blood type is..." as an example - just that I got the idea that it could have been developed and heightened a little bit more. It is a good story, as ever I am yet to be disappointed by a James Bond tale - but I would say that it doesn't quite reach the pinnacle set by Casino Royale or Live And Let Die. It's a Sir Francis Drake rating for sure, but more toward the lesser of his achievements (such as blowing a trumpet at a Spanish ship and scaring it off in doing so) as opposed to destroying the Armada.