Dr. No (novel)

Dr. No (novel)

Dr. No is the sixth novel in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, first published in the UK by Jonathan Cape on 31 March 1958. The story centres on Bond's investigation into the disappearance in Jamaica of a fellow MI6 operative, Commander John Strangways and his secretary, Mary Trueblood. He establishes that Strangways had been investigating Dr. No, a Chinese operator of a guano mine on the Caribbean island of Crab Key; Bond travels to the island to investigate further. It is on Crab Key that Bond first finds Honeychile Rider and then Dr. No himself.

The novel was originally a screenplay written in 1956 for producer Henry Morgenthau III for what would have been a television show entitled Commander Jamaica. When those plans did not come to fruition, Fleming adapted the ideas to form the basis of the novel, which he originally titled The Wound Man. The book's eponymous villain was influenced by Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu stories.

Dr. No was the first of Fleming's novels to receive large-scale negative criticism in Britain, with Paul Johnson of the New Statesman writing his review about the "Sex, Snobbery and Sadism" of the story. When the book was released into the American market it was generally received more favourably.

Dr. No was serialised in the Daily Express newspaper in both written and comic strip format. It was also the first James Bond feature film of the Eon Productions series, released in 1962 and starring Sean Connery; the most recent adaptation was a BBC Radio version, broadcast in 2008.