" A collection of short stories that has, so far, provided the titles to three films - the plots of which, of course, bear no resemblance to the plots of the stories whose titles they share. 'A View to a Kill' sees Bond helping out NATO in France (before France left the organisation), when a dispatch rider carrying secret documents is found murdered. It's all a cunning ploy by Soviet spies, who have set up a secret post in a nearby wood. Fleming apparently has a problem with acronyms: he thinks SHAPE stands for Supreme Headquarters Allied Forces Europe. Er no, that would be SHAFE. The title story opens in Jamaica with the murder of a wealthy British landowner and his wife, and then abruptly shifts to London, where M reluctantly admits to Bond that the murdered couple had been good friends of his and that he knew where the killer was hiding out. So Bond jets off to Canada for a spot of revenge, treks south through the woods, stumbles across the dead couple's daughter doing the same thing. They team up and kill the murderer, and Bond gets the girl. 'Quantum of Solace' has Bond being told a story by the Bahamian Governor after a dinner party about a young man and his wife of the Governor's past acquaintance. Don't read it unless you think women belong in the kitchen. In 'Risico', Bond is in Italy, loaned out to International Opium Control to kill a known drug lord. But the villain turns out to only be a smuggler, and a good chap, so Bond doesn't kill him. Finally, 'The Hildebrand Rarity' has a cartoon rich American visit the Seychelles in his huge yacht, ostensibly to look for some rare animal specimens, including the titular fish. Bond is also on the Seychelles and agrees to act as "underwater ace" for the millionaire. Except the American is a nasty piece of work and beats his wife... and is then mysteriously, and poetically, murdered. The introduction to this collection is by someone called Barry Eisler, who I've never heard of. But when he writes of Bond's "refreshingly antiquated view of women", I think I'll never bother finding out who he is or what he has written. There is nothing "refreshing" in chauvinism, and never will be. It continues to astonish me - and I've read nine of the 007 books so far - that Fleming is so well-regarded. Bond may be a more rounded character in the books than he is in the films, but that's not exactly saying much. The stories are not very clever, Fleming's prose is serviceable at best, and the sensibilities embedded in the stories are offensive - sexism, racism, homophobia... it's all in there, and quite blatantly too. "
— Ian, 1/29/2014