Thrilling Cities

1963 · Book · Ian Fleming

“If you write thrillers, people think that you must live a thrilling life and enjoy doing thrilling things. Starting with these false assumptions, the Editorial Board of the Sunday Times repeatedly urged me to do something exciting and write about it and, at the end of October 1959, they came up with the idea that I should make a round trip of the most exciting cities of the world and describe them in beautiful, beautiful prose. This could be accomplished, they said, within a month.”

Round the world with Ian Fleming—even on paper the prospect is enticing. Hong Kong, Macao, Tokyo, Honolulu, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, Chicago, New York, Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna, Geneva, Naples, Monte Carlo—these are his 'thrilling cities'. He writes about them brilliantly, impressionistically, as no one else would or could, ostensibly for our entertainment yet not without giving us the benefit of some expert observation. 'All my life', he says, 'I have been interested in adventure and, abroad, I have enjoyed the frisson of leaving the wide, well-lit streets and venturing up back alleys in search of the hidden authentic pulse of towns. It was perhaps this habit that turned me into a writer of thrillers, and, by the time I had made the two journeys that produced these essays, I had certainly got into the way of looking at people and places and things through a thriller-writer's eye.' It is not a habit commonly shared with more ordinary or leisurely travellers. Their interests have been studied in supplements of 'Incidental Intelligence' to each chapter. Idiosyncratic information is therefore included in a most original and exciting travel book. by Ian Fleming