The Facts of Death

Now Benson takes Bond to the heart of a fanatical cult whose sinister ideology is shrouded in the teachings of the ancient Greek mathematician Pythagoras. The members of the cult are committed to following their brilliant and mad leader on a series of numbered missions, each one more diabolical than the last. When M's lover, Great Britain's "Goodwill Ambassador to the World", is murdered by a stranger whose umbrella tip bears a tiny capsule of ricin poison and who leaves behind a scrawled "4", Bond is called on to halt the escalating body count of the Number Killer. In a hunt that takes him from the back roads of Texas to the crumbling ruins of Greece, he must use both cunning and brute force to stay ahead of the grand plan of the Monad, the mastermind behind the cult and the killings.