Actually, I KNOW where the "scriptwriter" pulled the PPK idea from. He got it from the book, although Fleming didn't say (as I recall) that a .32 had a delivery like a "brickbat through a plate glass window", or whatever the screen Armourer said along those lines.
Fleming had been corresponding with Geoffrey Bothroyd, a gun hobbyist and TV screenwriter, and also an author of some very fine gun books, of which, "The Handgun", in particular, is one of the finest works ever done on its subject. I corresponded with the real Boothroyd, who looked nothing like the screen "Maj. Boothroyd", by the way.
Geoff had advised Fleming to have Bond carry an Airweight Centennial, with a Model 27 .357 S&W in the Bentley, for longer range, when he had access to it. This was in part so that the larger gun could also use the .38 ammo of the smaller. That was hardly possible when the small gun was the .25 Beretta (I think a Model 418, given the date) and the large a Colt New Service .45 with 5.5-inch barrel. However, Fleming was also sent a copy of. "The American Rifleman" with a test of various enemy (WW II) guns against our M-1911A-1.
Fleming liked the compactness of small autos, having carried a Baby Browning .25 on official duties with the Intelligence branch of the Royal Navy Voluntary Reserve, on active duty in WW II. He personally chose the PPK, probably because he liked its looks and thought the German origin seemed sinister. When he wrote, "Dr. No" soon after, he goofed, and sent Bond with the Walther and the S&W Centennial to Jamaica. He had meant for the larger gun to be the .357. He did, later in New York on a visit, buy himself a Centennial, and was photographed with it on the back cover of some paperback editions of his works. He said that he bought it in New York because it was hard to find new S&W guns in Britain then, due in part to currency differences, and because demand for new guns was largely limited to people going off to Malaya or Kenya, etc.
As for Bond being thoroughly British, yes, absolutely. He was of Scots (father) and Swiss (mother) birth. TV writers tried at one point to make British thriller heroine Modesty Blaise and her pal Willie Garvin Californians! I wasn't surprised when that show fell on its face. Modesty and James were simply not transferrable to other nationalities.
Modesty by the way, in Peter O'Donnell's splendid books, used a "Colt .32" of unspecified type at first, later a Star PD .45. Her larger handgun was a S&W .41 Magnum, Model 57. When she used a rifle of her own, it was an AR-15. She also used rifles taen from her foes, and in one instance, used a Lee-Enfield with devastating effect, having been shown by an old soldier how to operate the bolt at warp speed (heh!) like the BEF had done in 1914.
You can Search for Modesty Blaise and learn a lot about the character and the series, which also ran as a comic strip in many countries. However, she has a sort of cult fan following and it is hard to find the Blaise books in stores in the US. People keep them!
But please DO NOT judge either Bond or Blaise by the movies. The books were far better in both cases.
Oh: after the S&W Model 60 appeared in stainless steel, Boothroyd said that this was surely THE James Bond gun, but Fleming was deceased by then, about the time that gun appeared.
Lone Star
