From Russia, With Love by Fleming, Ian - 1957

London: Jonathan Cape, 1957 First edition, first impression, in Gilbert's Binding A. Publisher's black cloth stamped to center of front board with a silver revolver in front of a metallic-red rose with a silver stem, spine lettered in metallic silver and red; in the original unclipped pictorial dust jacket with Richard Chopping's illustration of the sawed-off Smith & Wesson revolver placed on top of a red rose in front of a woodgrain background. A near fine copy with a touch of scattered foxing to text block edges, a few pages with now-flattened creasing to corners, else very clean and bright in a sturdy binding; dust jacket very lightly soiled with some wear to extremities and a few small nicks to top edge at corners and spine head. Overall, a very attractive copy of the fifth book in the Bond series. Gilbert A5a 1.1 From Russia, With Love has an archetypal Cold War plotline in which the democratic West must defend itself from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In this novel, Bond faces SMERSH, the Russian counterintelligence agency whose acronymic name stems from the Russian phrase "Death to Spies!" SMERSH seeks to undermine the British intelligence service by killing one of their 00 agents, and they have chosen James Bond as their target victim. From Russia, With Love introduces two of the most memorable female Russian spies: the glamorous seductress Tatiana Romanova, who baited womanizer 007 into SMERSH'S clutches, and Rosa Klebb, the Head of SMERSH's department of operations. Klebb possesses one of the more unique weapons in the Bond series: poison-dipped daggers that shoot out from her shoes. From Russia, With Love is largely considered to mark the turning point in Fleming's career as a successful writer.. Hard Cover. Near Fine/Dust Jacket Included. Illus. by Chopping, Richard.