In Goldfinger, James Bond uncovers a plot to deplete the Western world's gold reserves. He and the British Secret Service are tipped off by the Bank of England, which has become alarmed by the smuggling of large quantities of gold out of Britain. In 1959, Great Britain and many other countries were on the "gold standard," meaning the value of their paper money rested on their ability to back it with gold. Although most nations abandoned the gold standard in the 1960s and 1970s, Goldfinger's spectacular effort to loot Fort Knox still seems sufficiently menacing to maintain the novel's excitement.

In Ian Fleming's fictional world, the communist nations and the Free World are locked in a secret war. The Soviet Union represents the forces of darkness. In Goldfinger, the Soviet Union's secret organization of assassins, SMERSH, not only ruthlessly tortures and murders individual people who get in...