The novel is the third in the current-era literary series to be set during the original timeline created by Fleming since 1968's Colonel Sun (following Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks and Solo by William Boyd) and sees the return of Bond girl Pussy Galore, who made her debut in Goldfinger.

[1] It contains Murder on Wheels, previously unpublished material written by Fleming for an unfilmed television series, which Horowitz used to write the opening chapter.

She felt that problems only arose when Horowitz "deviates from the model", especially with Pussy Galore's substantial backstory and Bond's personality divergence from the previous books.

He noticed that after the "gripping and tense" Grand Prix scenes, the book "hardly takes a breath or allows the reader the time or desire to look for misjudgments", while only suffering from a few description errors with Bond's observations.

[8] Simon Schama, writing for the Financial Times, praised the "humdinger of a Bond story, so cunningly crafted and thrillingly paced that 007's creator would have been happy to have owned it", and described it as a "Loving Tribute" to Fleming.