"The Slaughterer"

Now I remember why I loved reading the Bond books along with the movies. After my post last week I decided to go and buy one of the Bond books I hadn't read yet. I bought From Russia with Love which is considered by many to not only be the best book in the series, but the best movie as well. It has a fairly simple plot in comparison to other Bond escapades with the Soviet lektor decoder machine acting as the macguffin for the story. Bond goes on a wild goose chase for this device and runs into great trouble along the way. I have been re watching the Bond movies with my roommate as he hasn't seen many of them before and we watched From Russia Love partly because I wanted to compare the novel and the movie directly. I love the movie, particularly the scene above where Bond faces Red Grant an assassin that could be Bond's match in physicality and fighting skill.In the movie Grant is simply described as a psychotic homicidal killer.
But in the book we learn so much more
about him such as his back story and what drives him to kill. His great physical strength comes from his German power lifter father. His skill comes from years of boxing since he was a kid. He became an enforcer later in life and began to fill hi insatiable lust for violence by killing farm animals. Then he progressed to actual human beings. Before being brought under suspicion for these killings he was drafted into the Royal Corps for WWII. From there he became disenchanted with his British superior officers and defected to the Soviets where his prowess and demeanor would be appreciated. Knowing this adds so much more tension to Bond's encounter with him than what is described in the movie.