The Spy Who Loved Me (1962)

The Spy Who Loved Me is the ninth novel and tenth book in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, first published by Jonathan Cape on 16 April 1962. It is the shortest and most sexually explicit of Fleming's novels, as well as the only Bond novel told in the first person. Its narrator is a young Canadian woman, Viv Michel. Bond himself does not appear until two-thirds of the way through the book, arriving at precisely the right moment to save Viv from being raped and murdered by two criminals. Fleming wrote a prologue to the novel giving the character Viv credit as a co-author.

The story uses a recurring motif of Saint George against the dragon, and contains themes of power, and the moral ambiguity between those acting with good and evil intent. As the narrator who tells her own backstory and expresses her emotions and motives, Viv has been described as the best realised and most rounded female character in the Bond canon. The reviewers were largely negative, with some expressing a desire for a return to the structure and form of the previous Bond novels. In a letter to his editor after the reviews had been published, Fleming reflected that "the experiment has obviously gone very much awry".

Following the negative reactions of critics, Fleming attempted to suppress elements of the novel: he blocked a paperback edition in the United Kingdom and, when he sold the film rights to Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli, they were permitted to use the title but none of the plot of the book. In the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me, the tenth in the Eon Productions series and the third to star Roger Moore as Bond. The title and the character of one of the villains, Jaws, are taken from the book. A heavily adapted version of The Spy Who Loved Me appeared in The Daily Express newspaper in daily comic strip format between 1967 and 1968; a British paperback edition of the novel was published after Fleming's death.

Plot summary

Fleming structured the novel in three sections—"Me", "Them" and "Him"—to describe the phases of the story. In the prologue he described the origin of the manuscript:

I found what follows lying on my desk one morning. As you will see, it appears to be the first-person story of a young woman, evidently beautiful and not unskilled in the arts of love. According to her story, she appears to have been involved, both perilously and romantically, with the same James Bond whose secret service exploits I myself have written from time to time. With the manuscript was a note signed "Vivienne Michel" assuring me that what she had written was "purest truth and from the depths of her heart". I was interested in this view of James Bond, through the wrong end of the telescope so to speak, and after obtaining clearance for certain minor infringements of the Official Secrets Act I have much pleasure in sponsoring its publication.

Vivienne "Viv" Michel, a young Canadian woman, narrates her own story, detailing her past love affairs. The first was with Derek Mallaby: the couple had sex in a field after being thrown out of a cinema in Windsor for indecent exposure. Their physical relationship ended that night, and Viv was subsequently rejected when Mallaby sent her a letter from Oxford University, where he was studying, saying he was forcibly engaged to someone else by his parents. Viv's second love affair was with her German employer, Kurt Rainer, by whom she eventually became pregnant. She informed Rainer and he paid for her to go to Switzerland to have an abortion, telling her that their affair was over. After the procedure, Viv returned to her native Canada and started on a journey through North America. She stopped in the Adirondack Mountains to work at the Dreamy Pines motel, in the employ of the managers Jed and Mildred Phancey.

Them

At the end of the vacation season, the Phanceys entrust Viv with looking after the motel for the night before the owner, Mr Sanguinetti, can arrive to take inventory and close it up for the winter. Two mobsters, "Sluggsy" Morant and the steel-toothed Sol "Horror" Horowitz, both of whom work for Sanguinetti, arrive and say they are there to look over the motel for insurance purposes. The two have been hired by Sanguinetti to burn down the motel so that he can make a fraudulent insurance claim. The blame for the fire would fall on Viv, who was to perish in the incident. The men immediately start harassing Viv, making crude passes and aggressively asking her to dance; when she says she does not want to, they attack her, intending to rape her, when the door buzzer interrupts them.

Him

The British secret service agent James Bond appears at the door asking for a room, having had a flat tyre while passing. Bond soon realises that Horror and Sluggsy are mobsters and that Viv is in danger. Bond pressures the gangsters into providing him a room. Bond tells Viv that he is in America in the wake of Operation Thunderball and had been detailed to protect a Russian nuclear expert who defected to the West. That night Sluggsy and Horror set fire to the motel and attempt to kill Bond and Viv. A gun battle ensues and, during their escape, Horror and Sluggsy's car crashes into a lake. Bond and Viv retire to bed, but Sluggsy is still alive and makes a further attempt to kill them, before Bond shoots him dead.

Viv wakes to find Bond gone, leaving a note in which he promises to send her police assistance and which he concludes by telling her not to dwell too much on the ugly events through which she has just lived. As Viv finishes reading the note, a large police detachment arrives. After taking her statement, the officer in charge of the detail reiterates Bond's advice, but also warns Viv that all men involved in violent crime and espionage, regardless of which side they are on—including Bond himself—are dangerous and that she should avoid them. Viv reflects on this as she drives off at the end of the book, continuing her tour of America; despite the officer's warning, she still devotes her thoughts to Bond.