Up to the usual Bond series standard - Rated 
The seventh (1959) instalment in the Bond series is up to the usual high standard (only Diamonds are Forever has disappointed so far), and is another fine adventure story. Goldfinger's focus on mind games rather than physical adventure is more From Russia With Love than Live and Let Die, Moonraker or Dr No, but Goldfinger is a little more fast-paced than From Russia With Love, and simpler in structure. The focus is on Bond all the way. In Casino Royal Fleming manages to make a game of cards very interesting, even for the non-card player. He pulls off a similar trick here with an 18-hole round of golf.
The male chauvinism, of course is in there. When Bond first meets Tilly Masterton, "Their eyes met and exchanged a flurry of masculine/feminine master/slave signals" (pg 149). On page 222 Bond laments "giving the votes to women" and argues that, as a rsult, "feminine qualities were dying out and being transferred to males", making "panises" out of both sexes, who are "not yet comletely homosexual" but are "confused" - what a theory! As in the film, Pussy Galore changes her sexual orientation when she meets Bond. The book, however, delves into the causes of her lesbianism (and, by extension, the cause of lesbianism in general in the Fleming world picture) - it stems from chillhood sexual abuse.
There is also the usual racial superiority - there is some shocking prejudice against the Koreans (of which race Oddjob is a member). At one point, Goldfinger explains to Bond how he supplies his Korean workforce with "street women" from London: "The women are not much to look at, but they are white and that is all the Koreans ask - to submit the white race to the grossest indignaties" (pg 129). Later, Bond has a desire "to put Oddjob and any other Korean firmly in his place, which, in Bond's estimation, was rather lower than apes in the mammalian hierarchy" (pg 181). These are just two examples: there is plenty more of this stuff in the book.
Because these words and thoughts are attributed to both Bond and Goldfinger, you get the impression that the prejudice doe come from Fleming himself rather than just his characters. But you have to remember the period in which these books were written, and not take this stuff too seriously.
The famous 1965 film follows the book quite closely. All the memorable characters and set pieces are there: Bond sniffing out Goldfinger's method of cheating at cards, the rigged game of golf, Bond pinned down on a table with a laser/circular saw threatening to cut him in half (the classic lines from the film - "Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die") are not in the book, sadly), Pussy Galore and her team of lesbians, Oddjob and his bowler hat, and the heist on Fort Knox. However, in the book (and rather less ingeniously than in the film) Goldfinger does intend simply to rob Fort Knox rather than irradiate its gold.
Disappointingly, the last third of the book lacks suspense and drags a little.
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