The James Bond Bedside Companion (50 page)

Niko Litsas is an admirable Bond ally along the lines of Darko Kerim and Colombo. In his mid-forties, Litsas is a World War II hero and an excellent sailor. He is tanned a rich brown after years of sun and salt air, and is remarkably handsome. Bond puts him down as a loyal friend and a totally implacable and ruthless enemy. He "trusts him on sight." His obvious similarities to Kerim and Colombo prevent him from becoming an outstanding Bond ally, but he is certainly more interesting than the Felix Leiter of THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN. Litsas shows tremendous bravery and fortitude throughout the story, and his character is an integral part of the plot

A different side of M is revealed in COLONEL SUN. The opening scene presents a catatonic, zombielike Admiral, a condition which frightens Bond and intensifies his determination to rescue his chief. M, for the first time, is seen in a helpless, defenseless state. He is reduced to dealing with violence on the same level as Bond. The image of the great Admiral for whom Bond holds "his deepest respect" in such a state cannot help but evoke an emotional response from the reader.

HIGHLIGHTS AND OTHER INGREDIENTS

A
mong the outstanding moments in the novel one must include the Quarterdeck scene at the opening. It is explosive, highly dramatic, and immediately sets the book's peculiar, foreboding tone. The action scenes in the first half of the book are somewhat flawed by the fact that the plot, which is extremely complicated and sometimes confusing, has not yet been fully explained. For example, it is sometimes difficult to tell the two different houses on the islet apart, as well as distinguish who inhabits which house. It may have been a mistake on Amis' part not to reveal the implications of the Russians' summit conference until very late in the book

Once Bond is captured by Colonel Sun, the book never lets up in excitement. The torture scene is particularly unsettling, and the subsequent fight with Sun and his men is bloody and violent in a way Fleming never attempted to picture.

Despite the slow patches, COLONEL SUN is a worthy successor to the Fleming
oeuvre.
It is too bad Kingsley Amis was not interested in continuing the series. COLONEL SUN would be the last James Bond novel for another thirteen years. Weak in the middle but terrific at both ends, COLONEL SUN is just as important to the Bond saga as the Fleming books, and should not be ignored by the serious Bond reader.

T
he summer of
1981
was significant for James Bond fans: the first in a new series of novels was published. British mystery writer John Gardner was approached by Glidrose to resurrect Bond from literary limbo, and the result was LICENSE RENEWED. This was followed by FOR SPECIAL SERVICES
(1982),
and ICEBREAKER
(1983).
Gardner has since been signed to write additional 007 novels.

The books are controversial among Bond fans in that they make many changes in Bond's world. Gardner's writing style is dissimilar to Fleming's, and Gardner/Glidrose have elected to update Bond's environment; basically, the character has been picked up and placed unchanged in the eighties. This change may be disconcerting to some fans who desire a continuity with the Fleming series. In
1981,
the "real" James Bond would be in his late fifties; the Bond of the Gardner novels is still fairly young—perhaps in his forties (there is a little grey showing in his black hair). Another striking stylistic element of the books is that they resemble the film scripts more than the original Fleming novels. Gadgets abound in the books, and LICENSE RENEWED especially borrows ingredients from the film versions of GOLDFINGER, THUNDERBALL, and ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. But, despite these disconcerting changes, all three Gardner efforts are fast reading, slick, and entertaining.

LICENSE RENEWED concerns James Bond's investigation of Anton Murik, the Laird of Murcaldy. Murik was a top nuclear scientist who had developed plans for a "perfectly safe" nuclear reactor. But his colleagues at the International Atomic Energy Research Commission would not approve his plan; Murik resigned and began making plans to hire terrorists to infiltrate six major nuclear plants around the world in order to cause meltdowns unless he is allowed to build his own reactor.

FOR SPECIAL SERVICES, the most engaging of the three books, involves a new SPECTRE organization controlled by an offspring of Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Clues have pointed to a wealthy Texan named Markus Bismaquer, an entrepreneur working out of a huge ranch. Bond teams up with Cedar Leiter, daughter of his friend Felix, and together they uncover SPECTRE's plot to drug the personnel of NORAD headquarters in Colorado with specially prepared ice cream. Once the personnel are at the mercy of SPECTRE, a disguised team of military personnel will infiltrate the headquarters and steal the computer tapes controlling the Space Wolves, the new laser-equipped satellites which can monopolize the arms race.

ICEBREAKER, the weakest of the trio of novels, concerns Bond's attempts to destroy a terrorist organization called the National Socialist Action Army (NSAA), whose objective is to rid the world of communism. The NSAA is revealed to be an extreme fascist group controlled by ex-Nazi Count Konrad von Gloda. In Finland, Bond teams up with KGB agent Kolya Mosolov, CIA agent Brad Tirpitz, and an agent from the Mossad of Israel, the beautiful Rivke Ingber. After a series of mistaken-identity situations, Bond and a girlfriend working for Finnish Intelligence, Paula Vacker, thwart von Glöda's plans to recreate the Third Reich.

STYLE AND THEMES

T
he obvious element missing from Gardner's writing is Fleming's journalistic flair for detail. Gardner is descriptive—he takes pains to describe foods, gadgets, locales—but his writing is simply not as colorful as that of Fleming. It doesn't have that distinctive elite tone—the original author's inner voice—which heightened the early novels. Gardner seems to be injecting detail into the story simply because it is expected in a James Bond novel. Whereas Fleming managed to weave technical and descriptive detail into his tales with exceptional believability, the "Gardner Effect" only calls attention to itself.

There is a semblance of a "sweep," however. The books undeniably move very quickly and generate a fair amount of suspense. Gardner is no amateur. He
manages to manipulate and involve the reader in the story, and he uses a plot structure similar to Fleming's in order to do so. But in a way, the novels move too quickly. They can be read easily and digested without much thought. The Gardner books might be termed "fast-food" James Bond. As an analogy, if Fleming's works were savored at Sardi's, then Gardner's efforts would be munched at McDonald's.

LICENSE RENEWED has plotline problems mainly because they ring too familiar with readers who have seen many of the James Bond films. Listed below are instances in the book which correspond to similar moments in the films:

1. Bond assumes a cover to infiltrate Murik's castle. The door to Bond's room locks automatically from the outside. (
   On Her Majesty's Secret Service
   —the film and the novel.)
   
2. Bond spies on Murik's castle at night and is discovered by the guards; this is followed by a car chase, and Bond is eventually captured. (
   Goldfinger
   .)
   
3. Murik plans to blackmail Western governments with a nuclear threat (
   Thunderball
   .)
   
4. Caber, Murik's henchman, is ejected from an airplane via an airlock. (
   Goldfinger
   .)
   
5. There is a street festival in Perpignan, creating a crowd in which Bond can hide from Murik's guards. (
   Thunderball
   .)
   
6. Murik claims he is the heir to the Murcaldy clan. (
   On Her Majesty's Secret Service
   .)
   
7. Murik has an evil mistress who attempts to seduce Bond. (
   Thunderball
   .)
   

The novel is also heavily inspired by the plot of the film
The China Syndrome
. Bond even remembers the title of this Jane Fonda vehicle when he learns of Murik's plot to cause meltdowns in nuclear power plants around the world.

On the other hand, FOR SPECIAL SERVICES has a good, if implausible, story. The Space Wolf satellites of which SPECTRE is attempting to gain control, Gardner claims, actually exist even though no government will admit the fact The Space Wolves are laser-equipped and can be launched into orbit at a moment's notice when unidentified objects fly into friendly air space. When the object is deemed harmless, the Space Wolves can be recalled to base. These machines sound like they're from a James Bond
film
, but somehow Gardner makes the notion acceptable. In 1961, THUNDERBALL seemed farfetched. Today, the plot of that novel is quite credible.

Of course, the most interesting aspect of FOR SPECIAL SERVICES is the fact that the new leader of SPECTRE is named Blofeld. The true identity of this person is not revealed until the novel's end, but it doesn't take much intelligence to see through the ploy and determine early in the story that Blofeld is a woman. She is, in fact, the daughter of Ernst Blofeld, and possesses the same perverse qualities which characterized her father. Because Blofeld Sr. murdered Bond's wife, the mere name of the villain painfully jars Bond's memory. The reader is sympathetic to 007's feelings here, and this helps make the Bond character more human than he is in LICENSE RENEWED or ICEBREAKER. That's a secret to the appeal of the earlier novels—Fleming made James Bond believable as a man, as opposed to an indestructible superman.

Another successful element in FOR SPECIAL SERVICES is its irony. For instance, Bond goes to bed with Blofeld's daughter before he learns her true identity. In fact, he is quite taken with her. When he learns the truth, the shock leaves him speechless. Had Nena Blofeld acted a little quicker, she might have been able to destroy Bond in his moment of frozen horror.

ICEBREAKER contains enough ingredients for a potentially good Bond adventure: new and exciting locations, a plot involving a new terrorist group with political objectives, and plenty of action scenes. But unfortunately, the novel is weak because the Bond formula is so obviously recognizable in the structure. In addition, the plot advances in spite of Bond—nothing he does in the book has much effect on the outcome of most of the story. The character isn't even involved in the final battle—it is the Russian army that attacks von Glöda's Ice Palace. Because 007's actions seem peripheral to the story, ICEBREAKER's plot development becomes forced and mechanical; the events all begin to seem ridiculously contrived. There are so many instances of mistaken identity it verges on the absurd. For example:

1. At the beginning of the story Paula Vacker is simply an old girlfriend of Bond's. Suddenly she is a Nazi and works for Konrad von Glöda. In a moment of convenience (plotwise), she is revealed to be in reality a SUPO agent doubling against von Glöda.
   
2. Konrad von Glöda is really Aame Tudeer, a wanted Nazi official.
   
3. Rivke Ingber is in reality Anni Tudeer, the daughter of von Gl
   ö
   da. She masquerades through the novel as a Mossad agent working against her father; but in the end it is revealed that she is in cahoots with the former Nazi.
   
4. Kolya Mosolov is supposedly on Bond's side, but in reality he is working with von Glöda in an attempt to trap Bond inside Russia. After this is accomplished, Kolya doublecrosses von Glöda and turns against him.
   
5. Brad Tirpitz of the CIA suddenly becomes Hans Buchtman, von Glöda's right-hand man. But in a convenient
   deus ex machina
   ,
   Buchtman turns out to be CIA agent Brad Tirpitz after all!
   

Throughout the story, Bond is bombarded by these sudden, unrealistic changes of identity and dramatic objectives; as a result, 007 is kept confused and bewildered as he is bounced from plot device to plot device. These devices are finally so implausible that the story loses any suspense that may have been created.

Probably the weakest element of ICEBREAKER is its lack of character development, not only of all the supporting characters, but of Bond as well. Gardner has made the super sleuth a cardboard character. The reason for the implausibility of the many shifts in supporting character identifies is the fact that the reader is unable to grasp who these people are
before
the deception occurs. Gardner never gives the characters in ICEBREAKER a chance to make a first impression.

Thematically, the novels hold nothing new. There is a moment when Bond reminds himself of his job's political implications:

In the old blood-and-thunder novels of his adolescence, Bond had read time and again of mad professors, or masterminds, whose aim was to dominate the world. At the time, the young Bond had wondered what the mad, or bad, villains would do with the world once it was in their power. Now he knew. SPECTRE, and other organizations like it—with close links to Russia and the Communist ideology—were dedicated to placing all mankind slowly under the heel of a society dominated by the state: a state which controlled the individual's every action and thought, down to what kind of music could be heard and what books read.

In crushing SPECTRE, James Bond would be striking a blow for true democracy—not the wishy-washy, half-hearted ideals that of late, seemed to permeate the West.