Brad Frank was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1962, one month before the release of Dr. No in the U.K., and not far from where the film would have its first American showings at drive-in theatres across the Midwest in May 1963.

A Star Trek fan in his youth, Frank began volunteering to help organize the annual book fairs at his school. At one such event, he spotted a batch of the 007 paperbacks published by Signet in the 1960s. Since he enjoyed the James Bond films he bought several of the books. Reading them, he became enamored of Fleming’s writing style.

In 1981, he moved to Texas to attend the University of Houston. After graduating, he ran a bookstore devoted to science fiction.

After returning to his hometown of Tulsa in 2004, Frank learned that Bond collector Jon Gilbert was compiling an extensive bibliography of Ian Fleming’s works, and offered to send him any data he might have that would supplement his research. Gilbert began sharing draft chapters with Frank, who copy-edited the volume. In appreciation, Gilbert credited him as Editor when the book, Ian Fleming: The Bibliography, was published in 2012.

Frank owns many inscribed first editions of 007 novels, including one inscribed to Geoffrey Boothroyd, the gun expert who advised Fleming and became the model for Q in the films. His private collection also includes several of Fleming’s original typescripts and dozens of original letters.

Frank’s decades of collecting foreign editions of Fleming works led to him providing over thirty book cover variations reproduced in the book Bond Bound—Ian Fleming and the Art of Cover Design, itself a rare book published by Fleming-Wyfold Art Foundation in 2008. That same year, he was a consultant for the 2008 Fleming Centenary Exhibition at London’s Imperial War Museum. He also aids in securing and restoring original screen-used James Bond film vehicles for the Ian Fleming Foundation, of which he is a lifetime member.