In the novels, Bond has a .25 Beretta with a “skeleton grip”. He has filed the firing pin (?) and sawn off the sights. Is the model ever mentioned?
This site calls it a Beretta 418.
- Peter Wiggen
I can’t cite a page number, but I remember him carrying a Beretta 418 in Casino Royale. That’s a 6.35mm by spec, which translates to .25.
Wikipedia confirms it (along with a whole lot of other things).
Thank you both.
It’s been a while since I read Casino Royale; just read Live and Let Die, Moonraker and began Diamonds are forever.
It does look like if you shot someone with it you would just piss them off. 
I imagine he cut the front sight off for concealment. but why would he file the firing pin? Anothe English author who didn’t seem terribly familiar with firearms, Alistair MacLean, had the protagonist file the firing pin to make the weapon inoperative.
The 418, one of the later-model Beretta pocket pistols, had a little extension to the firing pin that would pop out of the back of the slide as a warning that it was cocked and ready to go. I imagine that Bond filed this part off so he could carry it and fire immediately without it catching on his clothing. Presumably, MacLean’s protagonist filed off the other end, the part that actually hits the bullet and sets it off, to render the gun useless.
That would make sense; apparently Fleming heard or read of the practice and misinterpreted it.
“He pulled back the breech and verified that there was no dust around the pin which he had spent so many hours filing to a point, and he ran his hand down the blue barrel from the tip of which he had personally sawn the blunt foresight.”
I believe it’s in Fear Is The Key. The love interest says how brave the protagonist was when she could have shot him while working for the bad guys.
“I consoled her and did not mention that if that gun ever fired I would never trust a three cornered file again.”