10. High Time To Kill (Raymond Benson)
Raymond Benson was, next to Jeffery Deaver, the last author to keep the James Bond franchise alive through books. His fourth novel, High Time to Kill, sent Bond around the world from the Bahamas to the Himalayas and introduced audiences to an organization named The Union, a kind of new version of SPECTRE if you will. The Union and its malevolent blind leader Le Gerrant would feature in three of Benson's works. Just imagine this for an opening. Bond is contracted to protect the governor of the Bahamas as he throws a huge party from The Union who plan to kill him to collect a debt. Not only do they succeed by disguising one their men as a guard, but also the guard commits suicide before Bond can get him to talk. Pretty classic opening for any Bond story. The novel then takes James up into the mountains as he attempts to recover a microfilm codenamed skin 17 before The Union can get their hands on it. Some chilling betrayals and icy deaths ensue.