The James Bond novels are nowhere near as appealing as the films, which are primarily visual, as is well known. They have had very few reprints.

Here, 007 faces one of those eccentric villains who are almost inhuman, and that's why it matters little to tear them apart at the end. A gold-obsessed, agoraphobic man who has the habit of painting his lovers gold to create the illusion that he owns the precious metal... and the exquisite idea of killing a suspicious secretary by painting her down to the last pore.

Those who are not golf enthusiasts will have to skip an entire chapter, or more, where Fleming dedicates himself to narrating in detail the match between Bond and Goldfinger. The thing is, Goldfinger wants to rob Fort Knox, and 007 plays the typical cat-and-mouse game with him, with grand settings and glamorous, bad girls.

This is how James Bond is introduced:
"...he was sitting in the last waiting room at Miami airport, contemplating life and death. Killing was part of his profession. He had never liked doing it; when he had to eliminate someone, he did it as best he could, and quickly forgot about it. As a secret agent who had been granted the rare double 0 prefix—which in the Secret Service meant a license to kill—he had the duty to look at death with the same coldness as a surgeon."

Another story from the so-called kiosk literature.