Dr. No

By Ian Fleming,

Book cover of Dr. No

Book description

Dispatched by M to investigate the mysterious disappearance of MI6’s Jamaica station chief, Bond was expecting a holiday in the sun. But when he discovers a deadly centipede placed in his hotel room, the vacation is over.

On this island, all suspicious activity leads inexorably to Dr. Julius No, a…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Dr. No as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Dr. No was the sixth James Bond novel Fleming wrote but it was the first one I was finally able to read in paperback when I was about twelve years old.

It transfixed me. I had never read anything quite like it, transporting a boy trapped in small-town Ontario into a wider world of sophistication, sex, and violence.

I devoured the other Bond adventures as fast as I could get my hands on them. If any books made me hunger for faraway glamorous places, it was the Bond novels.

If you can’t imagine the influence Fleming’s worldly writing had on…

Dr. No is so much more sinister than you remember him in the movie that began the James Bond series in 1962. He is a reclusive Chinese-German millionaire who lives on a Jamaican island where an MI-6 agent has gone missing. M calls on James Bond to find the missing agent and upon arrival is treated to a basket of poisoned fruit and a deadly centipede is left in his bed while he’s asleep. Dr. No has pincers for hands which just adds to the tension as Bond closes in. The menacing villain forces Bond to navigate his way through…

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