James Bond is sent to New York City to investigate "Mr. Big", an underworld voodoo leader who is suspected by M of selling 17th century gold coins to finance Soviet spy operations in America. These gold coins have been turning up in Harlem and Florida and are suspected of being part of a treasure that was buried in Jamaica by the Welsh pirate Sir Henry Morgan. Although Bond is at first reluctant to take on the mission, his attitude quickly changes upon learning that Mr. Big is an agent of SMERSH and that this mission offers him a chance of retaliation for previously being tortured by SMERSH operative Le Chiffre and having a Russian (Cyrilic) letter carved into the back of his hand by a SMERSH assassin in Casino Royale.In New York, Bond meets up with his counterpart in the CIA, Felix Leiter. The two decide to visit some of Mr. Big's nightclubs in Harlem, but Mr. Big is aware of their movements through his network of informers and they are easily captured. Bond is personally interrogated by Mr. Big, who uses his fortune telling-girlfriend, Solitaire, to determine if Bond is telling the truth. Solitaire lies to Mr. Big, supporting Bond's cover story. Mr. Big decides to release Bond and Felix with only a mild beating, and has one of his men break one of Bond's fingers by pulling it backward until it snaps, but Bond then escapes and kills several of Mr. Big's men in the process. Leiter is released by a sympathetic gang member who shares his love of jazz.
Solitaire later contacts Bond and they travel to St. Petersburg, Florida. While Bond and Leiter are scouting one of Mr. Big's warehouses that is used for storing exotic fish, Solitaire is kidnapped by Mr. Big's minions. Felix later returns to the warehouse by himself, but is either captured and fed to a shark or tricked into standing on a trap door over the shark tank. He survives, losing an arm and a leg. Bond finds him in their safe house with a note pinned to his chest "He disagreed with something that ate him". After getting Felix to the hospital, Bond investigates the warehouse himself, and discovers that Mr. Big is indeed smuggling gold by placing it in the bottom of fish tanks holding poisonous tropical fish. Bond destroys much of the warehouse and then causes Mr. Big's gunman (the "Robber") to fall into the shark tank without leaving evidence that he has discovered the coin-smuggling scheme.
Bond continues his mission in Jamaica where he meets Quarrel and John Strangways, the head of the MI6 station in Jamaica. Quarrel gives Bond training in scuba diving in the local waters. Bond swims through shark and barracuda infested waters to Mr. Big's island and manages to plant a limpet mine on the hull of his yacht before being captured once again by Mr. Big. In the grand finale, Mr. Big ties Solitaire and Bond to a line behind his yacht and plans to drag them over the shallow coral reef and into deeper water so that the sharks and barracuda that he attracts in to the area with regular feedings will eat them.
Bond and Solitaire are saved when the limpet mine explodes moments before they are dragged over the reef: though temporarily stunned by the explosion and injured on the coral Bond and Solitaire are protected from the explosion by the reef, and Bond watches as Mr. Big, who survived the explosion, is killed by the sharks and barracuda. Bond and Solitaire then stay in Jamaica for a brief holiday in the book's close.
Ian Fleming intended the follow-up to Casino Royale to be of a more serious tone, a meditation on the nature of evil. The novel's original title, The Undertaker's Wind, reflects this. Fleming conducted research for Live and Let Die and completed it before Casino Royale was published; his publishers had offered him a contract for three books following Royale's popularity. Drawing from personal experiences, the opening with Bond's arrival at New York's Idlewild Airport was inspired by Fleming's own arrivals in 1941 and 1953. Also, the warehouse at which Felix Leiter is attacked by a shark was based on a warehouse Fleming had visited in 1953.
One of the weaker Bond novels, Live & let die betrays a barely concealed racist view of Black American and Jamaican culture that leaves the modern reader more than a little uncomfortable. Fleming's belief that Britain could save a decadent and addled American society from Communist infiltration through the hard graft of just one man is now quite an amusing construct though.
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