It had no external hammer, so it would not catch on Bond's clothes. Boothroyd proposed that Bond should use a revolver like the Smith & Wesson Centennial Airweight. He also objected to the choice of holster. He felt that the Beretta 418 was 'a lady's gun' with no real stopping power. Boothroyd told Fleming that he really admired the Bond novels apart from the hero's choice of weapon. Boothroyd was a retired Army Major and gun collector.

Shortly before the publication of From Russia with Love in 1956, Fleming received a fan letter from a Major Geoffrey Boothroyd. He had used such a gun during the Second World War when he was in Naval Intelligence and felt it was an appropriate sidearm for a secret agent on an undercover mission.

So when he introduced, Bond as using a Beretta 418 in a flat chamois leather holster he probably didn't think too much about it. When Ian Fleming wrote the first of the James Bond novels, Casino Royale, he had no idea the direction in which the stories would go, let alone how many he would eventually write.

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