Colonel Sun is a novel by Kingsley Amis published by Jonathan Cape on 28 March 1968 under the pseudonym "Robert Markham".

Bond, assisted by a Greek spy working for the Russians, finds M on a small Aegean island, rescues him and kills the two main plotters: Colonel Sun Liang-tan and a former Nazi commander, Von Richter.

In the process, Bond discovers the complex military-political plans of Colonel Sun of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.

He intends to attack the conference venue and use M and Bond's bodies to blame Great Britain for the disaster, leading to a world war.

Ariadne persuades Litsas, a former Second World War resistance fighter and friend of her late father, to help them by telling him about the involvement in the plot of former Nazi, Von Richter.

"[1] Benson considered that M's character evokes an emotional response from the reader because of the change from his usual, business-like manner to a semi-catatonic state upon being kidnapped.

Sun is a member of the Special Activities Committee of the Chinese People's Liberation Army as well as a sadist and skilled torturer.

In Colonel Sun, Bond acts in concert with the Russians against the Chinese, which demonstrates one of the main themes of the book: a peacekeeping between nations.

[1] Military historian Jeremy Black describes the novel reflecting a shift in the balance of world power away from two-party Cold War politics.

[5] To accentuate this idea of Oriental threat, the novel demonstrates a disregard by the Chinese for human life, a position similar to the treatment of the East in Fleming's Dr.

[5] The original creator of James Bond, Ian Fleming, died in the early morning of 12 August 1964, eight months before the publication of The Man with the Golden Gun.

[13] Critic and future novelist Sally Beauman noted that it was "unusual, not to say unprecedented, for an established author to pick up the torch in this way," though she admits that "Bond [is] too big, and too profitable, a property to be placed in the hands of an unknown.

[27] Colonel Sun was broadly welcomed by the critics, although a number noted that despite Amis's abilities as a writer, Fleming's own persona was missing from the novel.

Baker thought that with Amis writing the story, "one might, justifiably, have expected a joyous rejuvenation or at least a devastating detour from the Fleming pattern.

"[29] He said that "Colonel Sun offers apt literary pabulum for Bond's fish-and-chip culture, for his neurotics, alcoholics and suicides.

[29] Writing in The Times Literary Supplement, Simon Gray, unimpressed with the novel, called the Bond in Colonel Sun "a chuckle-headed imposter whose arthritic thought processes would be a liability in a 'physical tussle' down at the pub.

"[23] He went on to comment that the novel only "offers the frustrated Bond addict ... a small academic problem, of swiftly passing interest.

"[31] Maurice Richardson, reviewing Colonel Sun for The Observer, wrote that when being judged as a thriller, the novel "is vigorous, quite exciting, rather disorderly, a bit laboured".

Beauman complains that the story lacks suspense and that Bond is far too gloomy: he's more like Ingmar Bergman's creations than Ian Fleming's hero.

"[14] A fiftieth anniversary review in The Guardian called Col. Sun "the most repellant racial caricature of all, a descendant of Fu Manchu and other fiendish orientals, noting that "Amis channels Fleming .

The review notes that "Amis, by March 1968, had already made public his Damascene conversion from left to right, and signed a group letter to the Times titled Backing for US Policies in Vietnam.

It was adapted by Jim Lawrence and drawn by Yaroslav Horak and published in the Daily Express from 1 December 1969 to 20 August 1970 and was subsequently syndicated worldwide.