First Chapter
28th May 2025
The opening of Raymond Benson's new Felix Leiter novel is available to read
By MI6 Staff
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The first episode of the digital serialisation of Raymond Benson’s new Felix Leiter adventure, 'The Hook and the Eye,' is out now, including the first four chapters in eBook format. Episodes will be released every two weeks, and the full novel will then be published in paperback.
Ian Fleming Publications has released the first chapter for free on their website, or you can listen to author Raymond Benson reading it in the video below:
Author's Note
Felix Leiter appears in Ian Fleming’s first, second, fourth, seventh, eighth, and twelfth novels. Ignoring the actual dates of the original publications of these works, Bond historians have long conjectured when in the real world the events in these stories may have occurred. In the late John Griswold’s excellent study, Ian Fleming’s James Bond—Annotations and Chronologies for Ian Fleming’s Bond Stories, the author speculates that Fleming’s second novel, Live and Let Die, actually takes place in January and February of 1952. Moonraker happens in May 1953. The action of Diamonds are Forever is between July and August 1953. Many online fan sites have adopted this perceived timeline (or very similar ones) as gospel. Given this conceit, Felix Leiter’s mishap with the shark in Live and Let Die transpired at the end of January 1952. He doesn’t appear in a Bond novel again until July 1953 in Diamonds are Forever. Thus, the following tale takes place in between those two works, during the last half of 1952 to be exact.
Real highways, hotels/motels, and restaurants around the USA that existed in 1952, as well as the states of landmarks such as Carlsbad Caverns National Park, were utilized in the text wherever possible. The New York headquarters of Pinkerton’s Detective Agency (the name “Pinkerton” without the apostrophe-s was used interchangeably) was indeed located on Nassau Street in lower Manhattan in that era. Robert Pinkerton II did spend time in both the Chicago and New York offices.
According to the latest U.S. government Consumer Price Index data to adjust and calculate for inflation, in 1952 one dollar would equal a few cents less than twelve dollars in 2025. Thus, $100 in 1952 would be the equivalent of $1,198.76 in 2025, and so on.
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