James Bond goes back into the Royal Navy in Win, Lose or Die, the eighth in the series of Bond continuation novels by John Gardner, published in 1989. Near the end of the cold war, a secret superpower summit is to take place aboard a navy ship in the Mediterranean. Bond must foil the terrorist group who plan to attack and disrupt it.
There’s plenty of action along the way. Bond engages in air-to-air combat, flying a sea harrier, and dodging a missile. There’s an assassination attempt at a villa near Naples, and a final confrontation with the head villain in the tunnels beneath the rock of Gibraltar. This is a fast-paced thriller written in Gardner’s fluent and elegant style, and as usual with his take on Bond there is much to enjoy.
There are two women, one in the navy and one in the secret service, but which of them is not quite what she seems? Bond doesn’t find out until near the end. M’s elegant country house, Quarterdeck, makes a re-appearance and there’s a neat reference to Bond having been secretly involved in the Falklands war. The villain is motivated by greed, rather than the cause that his agents think they are fighting for.
I have a couple of minor quibbles, that I wish I could edit out. Bond is promoted to captain. Yes, I know captain is a higher rank, but commander just sounds so much better, doesn’t it. There is also another woman who is introduced merely to sleep with Bond before getting herself killed.
The Fleming estate chose well when they approached Gardner to revive Bond in 1981. He was already an established spy thriller writer. Before that he had served in the Royal Marines and the Fleet Air Arm. His brief was to bring Bond into the 1980s, so M and Bond remain about the age they were in Fleming’s books, but must deal with the geopolitical realities of the new era.
Perhaps the best of them, certainly of the ones I have read, is The Man From Barbarossa, published in 1991. In this book, Bond works with a Mossad officer to collaborate with the KGB, and the assignment takes him to Russia. A terrorist group is threatening the Russian government in an attempt to bring soviet war criminals of the second world war era to justice. But what is behind it? This is set at a very specific historic moment, just before the Gulf war, when the hardliners were trying to regain control of the soon to be extinct Soviet Union. All of this comes to an action climax when Bond goes up against the Spetznatz, or Russian Special forces.
It’s slightly untypical of the series as it’s more like a serious spy novel with a character called James Bond in it. It was reportedly Gardner’s favourite among his Bond novels. I read it in a state of trepidation, because I was enjoying it so much I was worried that something would go wrong before the end, but I am pleased to say it did not. Certainly, it’s the only Bond continuation by any author that I did not find fault with and that I would put on the shelf next to Ian Fleming.
Other Bond authors have stuck to the original timeline, and this can create problems.
Colonel Sun by Kingsley Amis starts brilliantly, with the kidnapping of M, then continues well with a night time fight on the slopes of the acropolis in Athens. But as it goes on, the pace slackens; it’s like a balloon deflating.
Something similar happens with Solo, by William Boyd. It starts strongly, with Bond’s awaking from a dream of being back in the commandos. It was also a good idea to send Bond to Africa, something I believe Fleming was contemplating. Here, he is caught up in something like the Biafran war. But again, the novel slows down alarmingly in the second half, to the point of actually becoming quite boring when the scene shifts to America. There is also too much explaining of the villain.
Anthony Horovitz fell into a couple of traps with Trigger Mortis. He states very specifically that this story takes place just after Goldfinger, yet it is riddled with anachronisms. Again, there is far too much of an attempt to justify the villain psychologically. The modern political sensibility that, for me, mars Horovitz’s TV dramas, is also present. His second attempt, Forever and a Day is much better, but something of a missed opportunity, I feel. This is the Bond “origin story” and takes place before Casino Royale. But surely the Bond origin story that remains to be written is his time in the commandos in the second world war and his transition from that into the secret service? That is the story Boyd hinted at.
The spy novelist Anthony Price did something along those lines when he showed the main character of his espionage series, David Audley, as a young tank officer in Normandy who becomes involved in behind the lines operations in The ’44 Vintage.
Sebastian Faulks had a go with Devil May Care. A title worthy of Fleming, and there’s a neat joke at the beginning when Bond drives up the King’s Road and smells marijuana smoke. It’s a good read, but a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster, in that it seems to be assembled from left over parts of Fleming novels. For example, Goldfinger’s cheating at golf becomes cheating at tennis here, with a remote control adjustable net. One can’t quite escape the feeling that Faulks thought the task was beneath him. On the cover it said “Sebastian Faulks, writing as Ian Fleming”, in case anyone should mistake this for one of Faulks’ more serious productions.
It was Gardner, with his thriller writer’s imagination, who came closest to carrying on what Fleming had started. It was the more literary novelists who came a cropper. There’s a lively debate about his Bond novels on the internet, which suggests that they are still being read and enjoyed today.
The Good Reader 