Maybe I can clear this up a little. The guns that Fleming cited in, "Dr. No" were the sample pistols in an, "American Rifleman" article that Geoffrey Boothroyd, a Scots TV and gun writer, had sent to Fleming. The Army had selected a sampling of foreign service pistols and compared them to the US .45 auto. Some were basically pocket pistols, others were full size service guns. This was an unfair comparison, but our WW II enemies DID issue those guns! Boothroyd personally suggested a S&W Centennial Airweight for on-person carry and a S&W M-27 .357 for under the dash of the Bentley, for longer range, when he had it available.
Fleming confused them, and liked the compactness of the PPK. He had personally carried a .25 auto in intelligence work ( Baby Browning, as I recall) , and knew the value of a small gun. Getting caught with it would have been a serious error.
Geoff Boothroyd once wrote to me that some people had suggested to Fleming that Bond carry cap-and-ball .44 Remingtons! Baffling...
The PPK was in fact, very widely used by European law enforcement and military forces, including pilots in some countries. Having one wouldn't mark a man as a British spy, unless it had UK proof marks or ownership marks. The CIA is said to have issued some, partly because it was "deniable" and compact. The .32 auto ammo was widely available in most countries, too.
The movies are mostly action and gadget- oriented pap. The books, other than Fleming's, never interested me, although I tried to read some. The successors forgot that the basic Bond formula was sex and violence, laid over exotic locales and beautiful women. Get PC, and the books just weren't what they'd been.
None of the Bond authors really knrew guns well, but Fleming did own a number of guns and used them. He had an intelligence background, too.
By the way, the "long-barrelled .45 Colt" in the Bentley was probably a New Service with a 5.5-inch barrel. Fleming owned one and posed with it in, "Life" in a feature on him and his books. I suspect the gun came over as US aid after Dunkirk. Many such guns were used by special operations troops, as the odd (for Britain) caliber wasn't a big issue there.
The poster above who said that the .45 was an Army Special doesn't know Colts very well. The Army Special was not made in .45. I know that Fleming's gun was a New Service, and it was the logical candidate; he wouldn't likely have used a single-action!
Later, after S&W introduced the stainless Chief Special (Model 60), Boothroyd wrote in, "The Handgun" that this was the ideal James Bond gun. He made a good call! Boothroyd DID know guns, very well, indeed. He was one of the best gun writers of all time, although most of his material wasn't seen in the USA.
Re the Matt Helm novels, I enjoyed them greatly, although his Matt Helm was too brash to survive for long as a real agent, I fear. Helm was of SWEDISH, not Norwegian, descent. One poster here confused that. Donald Hamilton himself was of Swedish birth, and the last I heard of him, he was in Sweden with a son, rebuilding classic old boats for a living. I suspect that he is now deceased. He knew his guns better than any other writer that I've encountered, and was a hunter. He even contributed to, "Gun Digest".
Lone Star