Tiffany Case - The Novel

The Novel

In Ian Fleming's novel, she is an American diamond smuggler working as a fence for The Spangled Mob, a ruthless American gang that is smuggling diamonds from Africa through an international pipeline. Bond contacts her in London posing as petty crook Peter Franks, using her professionally as a gateway into the pipeline even as he develops a personal interest in her. Felix Leiter, familiar with Tiffany's background, acquaints Bond with the fact that she was gang-raped as a teenager and, as a result, has developed a hatred of men. She is nevertheless attracted to Bond, and the two ultimately become lovers.

Tiffany turns against her former partners, and helps Bond escape from their clutches. In the novel, she is later kidnapped by Wint & Kidd on the Queen Elizabeth, but she is in turn rescued by Bond.

After this adventure, the two briefly live together, but, like many of Bond's women, she is out of his life by the next novel, From Russia With Love. In this novel, Fleming writes that Tiffany found Bond too difficult to live with and returned to the United States with an American military officer, apparently intending to marry him. The explanation was somewhat unusual both because Fleming rarely even mentions Bond girls for more than one book and because Bond actually seemed emotionally affected at the dissolution of a relationship.

In the scene in which Tiffany is introduced, Bond speculates what "T. Case" stands for. Two names that occur to him are Tilly and Teresa. Both names would later be used for Bond girls, Tilly Masterton and Teresa de Vicenzo.