The Man with the Golden Gun (novel) who managed the Tate & Lyle plantations in West Indies after the war and the book's main villain, Francisco Scaramanga, was named after George Scaramanga, an Etonian contemporary of Fleming's: the pair are said to have fought at school. The effects of the two Eon Productions Bond films released prior to the writing of the novel ("Dr. No" and "From Russia with Love") were reflected in the novel through the increased number of gadgets used. One of these was the poison gun used in the scene of the attempted assassination of M. The idea was taken from the story of
The Man with the Golden Gun (novel) over an hour's worth of work a day. As with his previous novels, Fleming used events from his past as elements in his novel. Whilst at Kitzbühel in the 1930s, Fleming's car, a Standard Tourer, had been struck by a train at a level crossing and he had been dragged fifty yards down the track. From that time on he had associated trains with death, which led to their use as a plot device not just in "The Man with the Golden Gun", but also in "Diamonds Are Forever" and "From Russia, with Love". As well as using events from