The Man with the Golden Gun (novel) assassination attempt, not only does M not press charges against Bond, he sends him out on further missions. According to Benson, the main adversary of the novel, Francisco Scaramanga, is more a henchman than a major adversary and "a second-rate, smalltime crook who happens to have gotten lucky with his shooting." Comentale, Watt and Willman note that Scaramanga had the same character profile as Herr von Hammerstein, the former Gestapo officer who is the chief of counterintelligence for the Cuban secret service in "For Your Eyes Only". There are two main themes in the novel. The first involves Scaramanga providing
The Man with the Golden Gun (film) Writing for "The New York Times", Nora Sayre considered the film to suffer from "poverty of invention and excitement", criticising the writing and Moore's performance and finding Villechaize and Lee as the only positive points for their "sinister vitality that cuts through the narrative dough." The "Sunday Mirror" critic observed that "The Man with the Golden Gun" "isn't the best Bond ever" but found it "remarkable that Messrs. Saltzman and Broccoli can still produce such slick and inventive entertainment". Arthur Thirkwell, writing in the "Sunday Mirror"s sister paper, the "Daily Mirror" concentrated more on lead actor Roger Moore than the