Moonraker

Keeping things close to home after his adventures on the other side of the Atlantic, James Bond is set on the path of wealthy inventor Sir Hugo Drax.

One slow day in the offices of MI6, M invites James Bond, 007 to join him for dinner and cards at the most exclusive of clubs, Blades.  Turns out there is a prominent player that has decided to cheat at Bridge.  Which is odd, because he's loaded and something of a national hero.  Turns out he's good at designing missiles, and went a created one heck of a missile for the United Kingdom.  So why cheat?  After enjoying an excellent dinner, Bond proceeds to take quite a bit of money from Drax.  Because that's what Bond does.

Turns out that there's been some shenanigans at Drax's base.  Bond is sent out to investigate under the guise of becoming Drax's new head of security.  He will be helped by Gala Brand, a Special Branch agent who is already working undercover at Drax's base.

And clearly, because this is Bond, nothing is at is seems.  As Bond digs deeper into the mystery of the base he learns that England is about to get one heck of a blow dealt to it.  See, Drax is not the upstanding British citizen that he claims to be.  Turns out, Drax is actually a former German officer that managed to get into this high position by effectively switching bodies with a British civilian.  So obviously, the missile is not going to be a harmless test fire.  Oh no, fellow readers.  Drax has reprogrammed it to land in the middle of London carrying a nuclear bomb.  Cause that's what evil madmen do.

Bond escapes the trap, saves the girl and saves the day.  Moonraker is probably one of my favorite of the Bond books.  Well written, and with a... I was going to say plausible plot.  I think that's slightly inaccurate.  Given today's lens of plausibility that is.  I can see this when it was first written and the tech, and fears of Nazi uprisings and Soviet Russia takeovers how this would be completely plausible.  Given how much I like it, its really sad what they do to this book with the movie; but that's a rant for another time.  Third book in, you still don't feel as if you NEED to read the previous books to catch up with whats going on.  So, if you have not yet, pick up a Bond book.  You won't be disappointed.