Writing in washingtonpost.com, novelist Stephen Hunter rips Bond’s PPK a new one:
“Its tragic flaw is that when it was designed, streamline was the hot lick, but nobody had heard of ergonomics; men adjusted to machines, not the other way around. And though it looks sleek, its edges are all razor sharp, while the trigger pull is like dragging a 75-pound rake across gravel. When you finally get the 10-pound lever far enough back to fire, the pipsqueak jumps like a snapping mousetrap as it recoils, the slide shooting back in supertime, then forward again as all those edges cut into your flesh. Shoot a box of ammo, and your hand looks as though it’s been put through a meat grinder. You probably haven’t hit anything either, because the sights are tiny and the barrel short . . .
“So the gun, like the man, is an illusion. Its reality is pointless: Bond never had to aim, had hands made of asbestos and never missed. He could have fired a staple gun and put Blofeld away.”