You Only Live Twice

'You Only Live Twice' is the eleventh novel in Ian Fleming’s James Bond series. Bond is sent to Japan on an assignment which soon develops into a duel with SPECTRE agent Ernst Blofeld who has been plotting against him for months from his lair in Switzerland and Thailand, codenamed 'Hades'. This is the first James Bond novel where the distinction between good and evil—Harry Saltzman insisted that SPECTRE must not appear simply as villains--is blurred; when M orders Bond to kill Blofeld, he shakes his head.

In Japan, Bond falls in love with an American karate expert named Kissy Suzuki whom he meets at the house of Tiger Tanaka, head of the Japanese secret service. When she is killed by Blofeld's ninja assassins, Bond seeks revenge and eventually kills both Blofeld and his henchwoman Irma Bunt; before he is shot down after being chased across the mountains by SU-15 interceptors.

You Only Live Twice is the third book in what is called the 'Blofeld Trilogy', called that after the main villain of SPECTRE Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The other two works in the trilogy are 'Thunderball' and ‘On Her Majesty's Secret Service’.