Villains of the Bond Novels Online Quiz | Authors

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. James Bond requires your help. He has only this description to go on: "The general effect of the face - the riot of red-brown hair, the powerful nose and jaw, the florid skin - was flamboyant. It put Bond in mind of a ring-master at a circus. The contrasting sharpness and coldness of the left eye supported the likeness." Which villain is the Bond creator author Ian Fleming describing here?

Answer: Hugo Drax

The excerpt is quoted from 'Moonraker' by Ian Fleming published by Pan Books Ltd., London, in 1963. The novel first appeared in print in 1955.

It seems that the title for this novel gave author Ian Fleming some problems as he first suggested titles to his publisher such as 'The Infernal Machine', 'The Inhuman Element' and 'Wide of the Mark'.
His publishers countered with other suggestions including; 'The Moonraker Sense', 'The Moonraker Plan', or 'Bond and The Moonraker'. But Fleming opted for 'Moonraker'.
It was the only Fleming produced 'Bond' novel that was Americanised in terms of spelling and idiom.

2. We cannot warn Bond but this villainous character has been ordered to assassinate him. A daily challenge for the British secret agent you might suppose. From this description can you tell me who is being described? "...was the result of a midnight union between a German professional weight-lifter and a Southern Irish waitress. The union lasted for a quarter of an hour on the damp grass behind a circus tent outside Belfast. Afterwards the father gave the mother half a crown and the mother walked happily home to her bed in the kitchen of a caf� near the railway station. When the baby was expected, she went to live with an aunt in the small village of Aughmacloy that straddles the border, and there, six months later, she died of puerperal fever shortly after giving birth to a twelve-pound boy."

Answer: Red Grant Donovan

The excerpt is taken from 'From Russia, With Love,' by author Ian Fleming. it was published by Pan Books Ltd., London, in 1964. The original publication date for the novel was some years earlier in 1957.

After this article appeared in the USA publication 'Life' the popularity of James Bond novels in America, at least, was assured. Hugh Sidey wrote an article entitled 'The President's Voracious Reading Habits' which appeared in 'Life' on 17th March 1961. In it he quoted President John F Kennedy as listing 'From Russia, With Love,' as one of his ten favourite books.

3. This female began her life in the Bond novel as a Harlem gangster with her own gang. She underwent a conversion at the hands of Bond and eventually helped him with his endeavours. According to the main villain of the book; "The team was unsuccessful, so she trained them as burglars, at burglars. It grew into a gang of outstanding ruthlessness. It is a Lesbian organization which now calls itself 'The Cement Mixers'." Who is being described here?

Answer: Pussy Galore

Auric Goldfinger was the evil genius in the novel 'Goldfinger'. In this norvel, he said, 'She is the only woman who runs a gang in America. It is a gang of women. I shall need some women for this operation. She is entirely reliable. She was a trapeze artist. She had a team. It was called "Pussy Galore and her Acrobats".'

This excerpt came from 'Goldfinger' by Ian Fleming published by Pan Books Ltd., London in 1965. The novel was first published in 1959.

4. One of Bond's most challenging assignments pitted him against this character described here by Bond's Chief of Staff who was briefing Bond at the start of this mission: "Now I see in this dreadful experience a possible reason for the transformation of [...] into the most vicious gunman of recent years. In him was, I believe, born on that day a cold-blooded desire to avenge himself on all humanity. That the elephant had run amok and trampled many innocent people, that the man truly responsible was his handler and that the police were only doing their duty, would be, psychopathologically, either forgotten or deliberately suppressed by a youth of hot-blooded stock whose subconscious had been deeply lacerated." Which Bond villain is the subject of this report?

Answer: Scaramanga

This description was taken from 'The Man with the Golden Gun' by Ian Fleming, published by Pan Books Ltd., London, in 1967.

Kinglsey Amis, who under the pseudonym Robert Markham later wrote the first post-Fleming Bond book ('Colonel Sun') produced a critique of the James Bond novels written by Fleming which appeared in a literary criticism compilation called 'The James Bond Dossier' in which he described the novel as 'very thin' and suggested the it was little more than a reworks of 'Diamonds Are Forever' and 'Goldfinger.' Many Fleming fans would probably agree that it was a novel missing the usual ingenuity characteristic of the earlier novels.

'The Man with the Golden Gun' was published posthumously.

5. Name the Bond villain also known as 'the Number' or 'the Cipher' who has a penchant for baccarat and inventive makeshift torture, and who had Bond at his mercy before the intervention of an agent of Smersh who inadvertently saved Bond's life.

Answer: Le Chiffre

Le Chiffre appeared in the Fleming novel 'Casino Royale' published in 1953.

The novel featured a Camera bomb, Bond's baccarat duel with Le Chiffre, and carpet beater torture.

Fleming wrote most of his James Bond novels in Jamaica in his house on the north coast which he named 'Goldeneye'. The novel 'Casino Royale' was the first of the fourteen novels penned by Fleming. It was in this novel that Fleming first gave a physical description of James Bond:

'It was a dark, clean-cut face, with a three-inch scar showing whitely down the sunburned skin of the right cheek. The eyes were wide and level under straight, rather long black brows. The hair was black, parted on the left, and carelessly brushed so that a thick black comma fell down over the right eyebrow. The longish straight nose ran down to a short upper lip below which was a wide and finely drawn but cruel mouth.'

6. For this assignment Bond was ordered to infiltrate a diamond smuggling 'pipeline' and follow it as far as possible to discover the brains behind the operation. He encountered two villains who sought to physically dissuade him. One of them owned a ghost town called 'Spectreville'. What were they called?

Answer: Spang and Spang

Jack Spang and Seraffimo Spang were the gangster brothers described in this story line and these villains appeared in the novel 'Diamonds Are Forever'.

This novel was criticised at the time for its apparent racism as Fleming suggested racial stereotypes in his description of Mr Big and his allies and in the way he contrasted what he considered the instinctive thinking processes of the Harlem gangsters as opposed to the cool logical thought processes of Leiter and Bond.

7. This little lady, who was senior Russian spy, very nearly did for Bond thanks to her needlework. Who am I describing?

Answer: Rosa Klebb

Rosa Klebb was the Russian agent who nearly succeeded in terminating the life of British Secret Agent James Bond. Her use of poisoned needles took advantage of Bond's rather dismissive attitude towards her given his arrogance and her gender and diminutive size. He soon learned the error of his perceptions. Why not read the novel and find out for yourself?

She appeared with Red Grant Donovan in the novel 'From Russia, With Love' which was published in 1957.

8. This villain was discomfited by Bond through a Canasta ploy and during a very competitively played golf game. He was distracted by brightly and valuably painted females. What was his name?

Answer: Auric Goldfinger

The novel was named after the chief villain Auric Goldfinger. Fleming apparently used the name of a neighbour of his in London, the then well-known architect Erno Goldfinger. Fleming did not like the style of the house Goldfinger built and it amused him to name his villain after his neighbour.

Erno Goldfinger consulted his lawyers when the book was published, prompting Fleming to demonstrate his sardonic sense of humour and suggest renaming the character 'Goldprick', but both parties eventually settled out of court in return for legal costs (in favour of Goldfinger) and six original copies of the novel, and an agreement that the characters' first name Auric would always be used.

9. These villains all appeared in this novel; Emilio Largo, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Count Lippe and Guiseppe Petachi. What was it called?

Answer: Thunderball

The novel 'Thunderball' appeared in 1961 and featured hijacking of nuclear bombs, a tense chemin de feu game with Largo and a stunning underwater battle.

Ian Fleming produced this novel out of several previously failed attempts to write it as television screenplay. He had previously collaborated with other writers in working on these scripts and had to settle a legal challenge over plagiarism by Kevin McClory after the novel was published.

10. In the novel 'You Only Live Twice' Ernst Blofeld reappears in disguise. What was the name he used until unmasked by James Bond?

Answer: Dr Guntrun Shatterhand

In the novel, Blofeld masqueraded as Dr Guntrun Shatterhand, a Swiss botanist, who has created a garden in a Japanese castle, but has stocked it only with highly deadly and poisonous birds and fishes.

The title of the novel was taken from an attempted 'haiku' drafted by Bond in hnour of his friend Tiger Tanaka. A haiku was an complex Japanese literary form which could be roughly equated to a poetic epigraph.

'You only live twice:
Once when you're born
And once when you look death in the face.'

Source: Author bracklaman

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor MotherGoose before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Villains of the Bond Novels Trivia Quiz

Millions enjoy the Bond films but ignore the novels written by the master writer, Ian Fleming, who was a well-known travel writer and occasional newspaper correspondent in the British press. Your task is to identify the villains who appear in some of the

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>

NEXT>