Ian Fleming: The Man with the Golden Typewriter

I just picked up a must-have book not only for fans of James Bond, but anybody interested in a good biography as well.

The Man with the Golden Typewriter reprints Fleming's correspondence to editors, friends and fans, and his letters pertaining to Bond are terrific. It's a much livelier bio than previous editions, as good as those are (I re-read the 1996 Lycett bio often).

But it's a sad book, too. You're basically reading somebody else's mail, getting caught up in their life and gossip, only to find the very last letter in which his secretary must inform a friend that Fleming is in the hospital and not doing well. You can tell by the date of the letter that he died shortly after, and you can't help but feeling bad. In these letters Fleming is alive again as sure as he was when he walked the earth, and I must admit it was a bit of a shock to get to the end. Sure, you know how and when he died, but here is news coming in "real time" so to speak, and, anyway, it ads weight to the proceedings that doesn't exist in similar letters of Chandler and Hammett

I can't recommend it enough.