Fleming built “Diamonds Are Forever”, a compact and dark Bond thriller, on a newspaper report about diamond smuggling. It is the fourth novel in the series and runs to about 250 pages. Some readers find it a strange, half-hearted entry, as if the author’s own interest had flagged. Those readers rate the next book, “From Russia with Love”, well above it.

The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.

About the book

Diamonds Are Forever is the fourth novel by the British author Ian Fleming to feature his fictional British Secret Service agent James Bond. Fleming wrote the story at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica, inspired by a Sunday Times article on diamond smuggling. The book was first published by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom on 26 March 1956.

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Reading order · James Bond

Full order & progress →

On screen

This book has been adapted for the screen once.

FilmDiamonds Are Forever1971dir. Guy HamiltonIMDb

Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →

Where the score comes from

The sources average 6.9 across 113 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 43% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Spy & espionage average of 7.6. That is how 7.3 comes out.