James Bond is sent to investigate Mr Big, a powerful Harlem crime boss whom British intelligence believes is working for SMERSH. Mr Big is moving a hoard of seventeenth-century pirate treasure through the United States and using the proceeds to support Soviet operations. Bond follows the trail through New York and Florida with Felix Leiter before the case leads to Jamaica and the remote island from which the gold is being smuggled.
Solitaire, Mr Big’s reluctant fortune-teller, becomes both an intelligence source and a target, drawing Bond deeper into a violent network that mixes organised crime, political espionage and maritime smuggling. The plot is fictional, but its movement between American cities and late-colonial Jamaica reflects the international reach that Fleming gave Cold War intelligence and the changing post-war Atlantic world.
