 George Malcolm Thompson, writing in "The Evening Standard", believed "Live and Let Die" to be "tense; ice-cold, sophisticated; Peter Cheyney for the carriage trade".Writing in "The New York Times", Anthony Boucher—a critic described by Fleming's biographer, John Pearson, as "throughout an avid anti-Bond and an anti-Fleming man"—thought that the "high-spots are all effectively described ... but the narrative is loose and jerky".Boucher concluded that "Live and Let Die" was "a lurid meller contrived by mixing equal parts of Oppenheim and Spillane".