Icebreaker – John Gardner, 1983 [No Stars]

007 Faces His Greatest Threat...a Sneering Novelist

Who in their right minds hires a novelist to flip off his audience?

In the early 1980s, the answer to the above question was Glidrose Publications Ltd. A production company owned by the family of Ian Fleming, Glidrose held literary title to Fleming’s famous fictional spy, James Bond. To carry on the Bond novels after Fleming’s death, they contracted a novelist, one John Gardner. By the time of his third Bond novel, Icebreaker, it had become clear Gardner not only disliked James Bond the character, but resented his audience, too.

The King’s Indian – John Gardner, 1974 ★½

Pondering Life and Death with John Gardner

Sometimes, death is just the trick to lift a literary figure to greater prominence. Christopher Marlowe, Edgar Allen Poe, and Sylvia Plath exemplify the notion of toiling in obscurity, dying young, and leaving behind a legend to inspire fresh generations of readers and scholars.

Often, though, death is just death. Case in point: John Gardner.

License Renewed – John Gardner, 1981 ★★½

007 Greets the 1980s

I remember my excitement seeing the blurb in Time magazine back in 1981. Glidrose Publications, Ltd., owners of the literary copyright of the world's most famous fictional spy, had granted permission for a brand-new series of James Bond novels.

But was James Bond ready for the eighties? John Gardner's initial updating of 007 kinda, sorta, sometimes works.