Robert R Kirsch, writing in the Los Angeles Times, also disagreed with Boucher, saying that "the espionage novel has been brought up to date by a superb practitioner of that nearly lost art: Ian Fleming.

Bond is thrown off by Klebb's innocent-old-lady act just long enough for her to get the drop on him, and they fight as Bond tries to hold off the poisoned knitting needles she uses as weapons. Grant explains the plan to kill Bond and Tatiana, making it look like a murder-suicide committed by Bond when Tatiana revealed the blackmail film of them, planted in the compartment. The book was not heavily read, just has a couple small spots here and there, maybe tiny coffee droplets. The recipient, Erich Hartmann (1922-1999), was the head of Magnum Photo, who "throughout his career, pursued many long-term personal projects, and photographic interpretations with literary echoes: 'Shakespeare's England', 'Joyce's Dublin', 'Thomas Hardy's Wessex'" (Magnum, online article), and took a series of photographs of his friend, Ian Fleming. Following on from the character development of Bond in his previous four novels, Fleming adds further background to Bond's private life, largely around his home life and personal habits, with Bond's introduction to the story seeing him at breakfast with his housekeeper, May.Top-bound notepad (275 x 198 mm), emblems of the International Criminal Police Commission (ICPC) and the Turkish Criminal Police Commission printed in dark blue to front paper wrapper and at head of each leaf, 3 initial leaves with autograph notes in blue ink (rectos only). Tatiana is in Bond's bed naked when he comes back to the hotel Kristal Palas (based on the real Pera Palas Hotel).

The same month the diver Lionel Crabb had gone missing on a mission to photograph the propeller of the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze while the ship was moored in Portsmouth Harbour, an incident that was much reported and discussed in British newspapers. Mary Shelley's darkly disturbing tale is illustrated by Angela Barrett and newly introduced by Richard Holmes.

According to Higson, Fleming spent the first four novels changing the style of his books, and his approach to his characters, but in From Russia, with Love the author "finally hits on the classic Bond formula, and he happily moved into his most creative phase". Although Fleming did not date the event within his novels, John Griswold and Henry Chancellor—both of whom wrote books for Ian Fleming Publications—have identified different timelines based on events and situations within the novel series as a whole. SMERSH the the Soviet organ of vengeance - of interrogation, torture and death - and James Bond is dedicated to the destruction of its agents wherever he finds them. Set among the bazaars and minarets of Istanbul, and aboard the Orient Express, the novel features some of the series’ most memorable characters.