Auric Goldfinger is the kind of man Bond loves to hate: cruel, clever, frustratingly careful - a cheat and a crook. So Bond relishes his mission to discover what this man - the richest in the country - intends to do with his ill-gotten gains, and what his connection is with SMERSH, the feared Soviet spy-killing corps. Bond soon discovers that Goldfinger's schemes are not only more grandiose, but also more lethal, than even he could have imagined.