SilverFin - Bond and Book Facts

Bond and Book Facts

• SilverFin begins with a similar opening to Ian Fleming's Casino Royale.
  • Fleming: "The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning"
  • Higson: "The smell and noise and confusion of a hallway full of schoolboys can be quite awful at twenty past seven in the morning."
• Bond's Aunt Charmian drives an identical Bentley to one Bond drives in Casino Royale and in subsequent books. Bond also inherits his Uncle's 1.5 liter Bamford & Martin Sidevalve Short Chassis Tourer. Bamford & Martin later became Aston Martin.
• During a scene at a circus the announcer presents "The Mighty Donovan". "The Mighty O'Donovan" is Donovan "Red" Grant's father, referenced in From Russia, with Love.
• When released in Germany in August 2005, SilverFin was retitled Silent Waters Are Deadly.
• A special signed limited edition hardcover was released exclusively at Waterstone's Bookstores in the UK on October 6, 2005.
• The U.S. edition of the book was edited to remove descriptions that were considered too racy for young readers. One such example includes a description of Wilder Lawless's legs during a tussle between herself and Bond.
• Higson's original working title was Out of Breath, but it was felt this sounded too much like an Elmore Leonard novel. Several permutations on "Silver" were tried, including: "SilverBack", "SilverSkin", "SilverHead", and "SilverFist", before settling on "SilverFin".
• A hellebore is a poisonous plant often thought to resemble a rose, making a suitable name for the handsome but evil Lord Hellebore.
• Lord Hellebore tells his son while they are hunting that they are a lot like Indians, and, when his son kills a deer, he says he is a true Red Indian. This is a reference to Ian Fleming's World War II days, where his soldiers were nicknamed 'Fleming's Indians'. References to Red Indians also appear in the novel Casino Royale, where Le Chiffre calls Bond a boy playing Red Indians, and on the last page, where Bond scolds himself for carelessly playing Red Indians while his enemies had been working right next to him.