Octopussy & the Living Daylights

Fleming was planning a second Bond short story collection at the time of his death along the lines of For Your Eyes Only. Sadly only four stories were in existence at the time, and two were published posthumously as Octopussy & The Living Daylights. Subsequent editions added first The Property Of A Lady and finally 007 in New York (a minor puff piece written almost as an apology for a scathing travel review of New York by Fleming).

In Octopussy Bond is sent to bring to justice a retired army officer who had killed to smuggle Nazi gold out of Austria after the war. It's a strange tale where Bond is a peripheral figure and an octopuss does indeed loom large in the story.

Confusingly some plot elements from The Property of A Lady were used in the film “Octopussy”, but the written story is very different from the Roger Moore vehicle. A tale of a KGB mole in the Service, a fabled jewelled sphere by Fabergé and a scheme to unmask the KGB's top man in London, this is a far cry from megalomaniacs wanting to take over the world. This is Bond as a nuts and bolts spy, hunting his quarry and doing the legwork. Harry Palmer would recognise him.

Finally there is The Living Daylights where Bond must use all his skills as a marksman against an enemy sniper to help an agent escape from East Berlin. It's a tense waiting game and again showcases a side of Bond we rarely see, the reluctant killer, the world weary spy.

So, while a minor set of Bond's these stories are an entertaining read and round out the Fleming ‘canon' nicely.