If you're a fan of the literary James Bond of Ian Fleming's novels, there are a few reference books you should have on your shelf: O.F. Snelling's 007 James Bond: A Report, Kingsley Amis' The James Bond Dossier, and Raymond Benson's The James Bond Bedside Companion. A fourth book to add to that list is John Griswold's Ian Fleming's James Bond: Annotations and Chronologies from Ian Fleming's Bond Stories.
Griswold annotates each story explaining terms and giving translations of non-English phrases. He goes into detail on the different games Bond plays throughout the novels and even has analysis of the chess game in From Russia With Love. Griswold did a lot of research for this book.
Griswold also has a detailed chronology of each story, down to every event in the books. I myself have worked on a Bond chronology and mine was not too far off from Griswold's. There were three points I took note to, although he makes a very good case as to why he has placed these stories in the years that he has. He stops with The Man with the Golden Gun, not going over any of the "continuation novels" by other authors. In future pages of this blog I will look at those stories and see where they fit into the chronology.
The book also has articles on Bond's British Secret Service, Q of Q Branch, Bond's cars, home and guns in the stories. He also gives a very nice chronology of Bond's life and one for the life of Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
If you are planning to read any of the novels I suggest getting this book. It will explain the little details you may not get right away and it will decently translate those French quotes Fleming loved to put in his books.
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