Finished reading DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER by British spy thriller writer Ian Fleming. This is Fleming’s 4th James Bond story. It deals with diamond smuggling from a British government-owned mine in the then colony of Sierra Leone to the United States in the early 1950s. A ‘Sunday Times’ newspaper article on diamond smuggling prompted Fleming to write this novel.
A former journalist, Fleming researched extensively on the subject. I noticed that in the story he referenced the 1951 US Senate Kefauver Commission Report on crime in America.
‘Diamonds Are Forever’ was first published in 1956. Reading it now, I noticed some changes in the world. Idlewild Airport is now John F. Kennedy Airport. BOAC is now British Airways. Pan-American Airlines is now defunct. And so on.