Amis, Kingsley

The life of secret agent James Bond has begun to fall into a pattern that threatens complacency – until the sunny afternoon when M is kidnapped and his house staff savagely murdered. The action ricochets across the globe to a volcanic Greek island where the glacial, malign Colonel Sun Liang-tan of the People’s Liberation Army of China collaborates with an ex-Nazi atrocity expert in a world-menacing conspiracy. Stripped of all professional aids, Bond faces unarmed the monstrous devices of the colonel in a test that brings him to the verge of his physical endurance.