Sally Beauman, writing for "New York", believed that "Amis has all the obvious ingredients for success", including "an exotic troubled international setting, a beautiful girl, frequent imbibings, and even more frequent killings; and, most imperative, a villain. Yet the book drags and becomes a bore." 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. Beauman attributes the novel's failure to the "differing characters of the authors."