This is the eleventh novel in the James Bond series. The second title in the 'Blofeld trilogy', preceded by Thunderball (1961) and concluding with You Only Live Twice (1964). In the novel Bond adopts the guise of College of Arms herald Sir Hilary Bray to allow him access to Blofeld's secret lair on the Piz Gloria, a fictional mountain top in the Swiss Alps. Whilst there Bond discovers SPECTRE's latest diabolical scheme, to destroy the British & Irish economies via a group of female patients at Blofeld's clinic, brainwashed into becoming 'mules' for biological agents to be smuggled into Britain and Ireland. The novel is also significant in the Bond canon for the tragic love-interest supplied by Contessa Teresa "Tracy" di Vicenzo.

First edition, first impression, binding A; 8vo (193 x 132 mm); publisher's grey cloth with ski-track motif to front board, titles to spine in silver, original pictorial dust-jacket by Richard Chopping with price 16s.net, bumped edge to top-right front panel, minor soiling and microscopically frayed edges to dust-jacket flaps, fading to red-lettering along spine, remarkably clean copy with no inscriptions, very good indeed; pp 288

Gilbert A11a 1.1