The Bond back-catalogue

NEW RELEASES

Perhaps with a view to a market killing after the success of the new James Bond film Casino Royale, Penguin Books has reissued its 2002 edition of Ian Fleming's 007 novels.

If it's true that some people buy books just for their aesthetic value, this series should appeal even to those with little interest in Fleming's brand of middlebrow spy fiction "" thanks to the attention-grabbing pulp-fiction covers designed by Roseanne Serra and Richie Fahey.

The covers follow more or less the same format: the author's name on the top right, a colourful background and a scantily dressed female character, with an element or two from the plot of the book. The spy himself is never featured, except perhaps as a tiny figure.

From Russia With Love
337 pages
£2.99

Russia's deadly SMERSH organisation has targeted 007 for elimination, and they have the perfect bait in the irresistible Tatiana Romanova.

Her mission is to lure Bond to Istanbul and seduce him while her superiors handle the rest. But when Bond walks willingly into the trap, a game of cross and double-cross ensues...

The Spy Who Loved Me
232 pages
£2.99

Vivienne Michael is in trouble. Trying to escape her tangled past, she has run away to the American backwoods, winding up at the Dreamy Pines Motor Court.

A far cry from the privileged world she was born to, the motel is also the destination of two hardened killers "" the perverse Sol Horror and the deadly Sluggsy Morant. When the coolly charismatic 007 turns up, Viv is not just hopeful but fascinated "" as every Bond girl is expected to be...

The Man with the Golden Gun
200 pages
£2.99

A brainwashed James Bond has tried "" and failed "" to asassinate M, his boss. Now Bond has to prove he is back on form and can be trusted again.

All he has to do is kill one of the most deadly freelance hitmen in the world "" Paco "Pistols" Scaramanga, or the Man With the Golden Gun. But despite his licence to kill, Bond is no assassin, and he decides to infiltrate the killer's criminal cooperative instead...