SOMEWHERE, a thousand confinement novels are being written. But why wait when we already have “From Russia, With Love,” starring James Bond and a stealth killer trapped inside a train compartment? For readers, escape is guaranteed: author Ian Fleming’s 1957 page-turner veers from wondrous to ghastly in a sentence. In what’s likely the novel’s best-remembered scene, Bond watches a Bulgarian hit man exit his lair through the billboard-poster mouth of Marilyn Monroe (Anita Ekberg in the film). Second billing goes to the entrance of a lethally customized Swaine Adeney attaché case—after which spy tales would never be the...

Source: Wall Street Journal May 27, 2020 19:07 UTC