Writing in "The Guardian", Malcolm Bradbury called the novel "a reasonable read but no more: neither vintage Fleming nor vintage Amis." Bradbury also noted that "it lacks a convincing rhetoric ... and the traditional Fleming frissons emerge only in muted form." 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". He went on to say that "Some of the action is quite well done and little more preposterous than in the later Flemings. The real trouble is the absence of spontaneous "élan"".