Page "For Your Eyes Only (short story collection)" Paragraph 28

Francis Iles, writing in The Guardian, noting the short-story format, " thought it better than the novels " and wrote that " the first story is full of the old wild improbabilities, but one of the others has a positively Maughamish flavour.

" Iles also thought that " it seems that one must either enjoy the novels of Mr. Ian Fleming beyond reason or be unable to read them at all.

" Writing in The Guardians sister paper, The Observer, Maurice Richardson thought that " our Casanovaesque cad-clubman secret agent is mellowing a bit now "; Richardson liked the format, saying that " the short form suits him quite well " although the downside is that " if it checks the wilder fantasies it cuts short the love-affairs ".

Writing in The Spectator, Kingsley Amis ( under the pseudonym Christopher Pym ) wrote that " each episode of the Bond novels meant the adventure was less probable and more preposterous than the last, and now our hero seems to have lost, as well as any claims to plausibility, the know-how, the know-who, know-what and sheer zing that used to carry the unlikely plots along.

Perhaps all that mattress pounding is taking it out of poor Bond ".