Ian Fleming's novel
Goldfinger brings a lot of elements from his previous books together. It opens with a
supporting character from
Casino Royale meeting
James Bond, recognizing him, and asking him to help with a card cheat, much as
M. does in
Moonraker.
The card cheat is Auric Goldfinger, and he cheats by having his secretary spy on the game with a telescope and radio him his opponent's cards. Bond catches him in the act, and forces him to repay his victim, plus 10,000 dollars to Bond.
Back in England, Bond is set on Goldfinger's trail. He is smuggling gold out of England. Worse, he appears to be Le Chiffre's replacement, the paymaster of SMERSH. Bond catches up with him at a golf course, where Goldfinger cheats, but Bond beats him at his own crooked game, to trhe tune of another 10,000 dollars. Goldfinger then invites Bond to his house, where a little snooping starts putting the pieces together.
Bond follows Goldfinger to the continent, where he learns the trick of the smuggler -- his armored Rolls Royce Silver Ghost is actually armored with plates of 18k white gold. In Europe, the plates are removed and relaced with real armor, melted down, recast into airplane seat frames for an Indian airline, installed, flown to India, and remelted there at a 200% profit. At this point Bond is captured by Oddjob, Goldfinger's human missile bodyguard -- karateka and, yes, armed with a steel bowler hat.
Rather than kill Bond as planned, Goldfinger puts him and the girl (Did I mention there was a girl? It's a James Bond novel, of course there's a girl. Three of them, in fact, although the only one who anyone remembers is Pussy Galore.) to work for him as executive secretaries on Operation Grand Slam, the planned robbery of Fort Knox, with the assistance of several groups of gangsters, including the Spangled Mob from Diamonds are Forever, now under new management, of course, thanks to Bond. Goldfinger's plan is to kill the entire population of Fort Knox by poisoning the water, then blow the doors off the vault with a backpack nuke.
Bond manages to get a message to Felix Leiter, his friend at Pinkerton, and they stop the plot in its tracks. Goldfinger escapes, captures Bond, and is instructed by his Russian masters to deliver Bond to them. Bond, with the help of the only gangster to escape (Pussy Galore, leader of the lesbian gang the Cement Mixers), kills the bad guys (Oddjob is the one sucked out the window), and returns to England, a secret hero.
Although this book is less racist than others in the series, it does perpetuate the myth of "All a lesbian really needs is a real man."