Rating: 4 out of 5
After losing his memory during his escape from Blofeld's castle, Bond had been living the life of a Japanese fisherman. One day, many months later, the name of a Russian town sparked a trigger in Bond's mind. At the end of You Only Live Twice, Bond started his journey to Russia to try and piece together the fragments of his past. Bond was eventually picked up by the KGB and sent through a rigorous rehabilitation program to regain his memory. In the process, they brainwashed Bond, and sent him back to Her Majesty's Secret Service to kill his old chief, M. In failing to do so, M had Bond reverse-brainwashed and in order to prove his recovery and settle the past, M sent Bond to Jamaica to kill the most deadly hitman in the business, "Pistols" Scaramanga.
After hopping from island to island just hours behind Scaramanga, Bond catches a lucky break and finds an letter written to Scaramanga in an airport mailroom describing Scaramanga's whereabouts the next day. Bond meets up with Scaramanga in a pub attached to an old whore house, and through a course of events, becomes employed as Scaramanga's assistant for the next few days as he entertains business guests at a hotel/casino he is building. Those guests turn out to be top criminals from across the world and Bond must join forces with an old acquaintance to stop, among other things, a major drug traffic line from forming.
The Man with the Golden Gun is the thirteenth novel in the James Bond series. While I did not like the way Bond was brought back into the service, the rest of the story greatly made up for it. Bond is re-united with Felix Leiter and Mary Goodnight in this gangster enthralled novel.