Bond returns to Britain after disappearing in Japan, but Soviet conditioning has turned him against his own service. After an attempt on M’s life and a period of recovery, he is given a mission intended to prove that he can work again: find and kill Francisco “Pistols” Scaramanga, an assassin blamed for the deaths of British agents in the Caribbean.
In Jamaica, Bond infiltrates Scaramanga’s circle and discovers a gathering of criminal and political interests involved in drugs, sabotage and regional power. The assignment becomes both an intelligence operation and a personal test of Bond’s restored identity. Fleming’s final full-length 007 novel uses independent Jamaica and continuing Soviet-Western rivalry as the background to a stripped-down duel between professional killers.
