Quite by accident – as these things are wont to happen – British secret agent James Bond, having concluded one mission, finds himself caught up helping an old acquaintance who is being cheated at canasta by the mysterious Auric Goldfinger.
Later, he is sent to investigate the same multi-millionaire, who just might be the banker for Soviet anti-spy agency SMERSH, in a case that leads all the way to Fort Knox and then beyond.
The seventh 007 novel from Ian Fleming, Goldfinger was published in 1959 and filmed five years later.
What is there to say? It suffers from a certain lack of balance to the story – a whole chapter is used to describe, in detail, a golf game, while the central action at the climax is disposed of a great deal more quickly.
There are hints of anti-semitism in the story – the acquaintance who needs help at the beginning of the book partly owns an hotel with a ban on Jewish guests, while the name of the eponymous villain, Goldfinger, can be seen as typically German-Jewish, although Bond, originally considering this, decides that he is actually a Balt.
The treatment of Koreans in general – Oddjob is only one of a number of Koreans on Goldfinger's staff – is simplistic and racist, with them being damned as a particularly cruel race.
Lesbians (Pussy Galore features here) obviously only become lesbians because they've been abused as children – but meeting a real man can sort them out. And Fleming has Bond take time to ruminate on the inherent unhappiness of sex equality and homosexuality in general, and the way in which they unbalance 'natural' gender roles.
On the other hand, the novel does at least see Fleming make an effort to endow his central character with some depth beyond the cartoonish character that we've come to love through the films.
It's of its time and is generally a fun romp, but it's difficult to see how the books have reached the point of being published under the Penguin Modern Classics imprint.
Later, he is sent to investigate the same multi-millionaire, who just might be the banker for Soviet anti-spy agency SMERSH, in a case that leads all the way to Fort Knox and then beyond.
The seventh 007 novel from Ian Fleming, Goldfinger was published in 1959 and filmed five years later.
What is there to say? It suffers from a certain lack of balance to the story – a whole chapter is used to describe, in detail, a golf game, while the central action at the climax is disposed of a great deal more quickly.
There are hints of anti-semitism in the story – the acquaintance who needs help at the beginning of the book partly owns an hotel with a ban on Jewish guests, while the name of the eponymous villain, Goldfinger, can be seen as typically German-Jewish, although Bond, originally considering this, decides that he is actually a Balt.
The treatment of Koreans in general – Oddjob is only one of a number of Koreans on Goldfinger's staff – is simplistic and racist, with them being damned as a particularly cruel race.
Lesbians (Pussy Galore features here) obviously only become lesbians because they've been abused as children – but meeting a real man can sort them out. And Fleming has Bond take time to ruminate on the inherent unhappiness of sex equality and homosexuality in general, and the way in which they unbalance 'natural' gender roles.
On the other hand, the novel does at least see Fleming make an effort to endow his central character with some depth beyond the cartoonish character that we've come to love through the films.
It's of its time and is generally a fun romp, but it's difficult to see how the books have reached the point of being published under the Penguin Modern Classics imprint.