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Comments
1. Nobody Lives Forever
2. Win, Lose or Die
3. Licence Renewed
4. Brokenclaw (I seem to be alone in liking this one)
5. Role of Honour
6. For Special Services
7. Scorpius
8. Death is Forever
9. Seafire
10. Icebreaker
11. Never Send Flowers
12. No Deals Mr Bond
13. The Man From Barbarossa
Not yet read 'Cold' so can't comment there.
JG usually has pretty serviceable plots, locations and characters...there's just something flat about his prose style that doesn't engage me. By the time he gets to 'Seafire' the descriptive passages feel like he's just copying from a travel brochure. Though I do appreciate he was under a lot of deadline pressure to crank them out.
Given the basic elements though, I'd love to see these in comic/graphic novel form where they'd work a lot better I think.....
I would rank No Deals Mr Bond as one of my favourites and maybe the first two as well.
Bond is particularly dangerous in NDMB.
I agree though that the earlier ones were the best. Maybe books 1 through 8 and then they kind of leveled off.
Simon Richard Gardner May 2011 www.john-gardner.com
That said, I happily bought all the Gardner books as they came out. I have most in first editions hardbacks, in fact 10 of the 14, and all of the paperbacks, including the screenplay adaptations, so I guess I must have been "down" with the books. Happy Bond camper here!
Yes, welcome SimG. Don't suppose you are allowed to enlighten us on some of the restrictions the publishers put on your father? ;-)
Simon Richard John Gardner
I have very fond memories of your fathers Bond novels and will certainly be snapping up some of the reprints (but why cant they use the original Richard Chopping covers?).
The climaxes of Licence Renewed and Nobody Lives Forever in particular are cracking fare and place our hero in some of the tightest spots hes ever been in.
I do think he shouldve maybe called it a day a bit earlier as I think the last 3 are pretty by the numbers but as I understand it he had quite a lot of stuff going on in his personal life at the time and if Glidrose keep on paying you who wouldnt take the cheque?
At the end of the day he is rembered by me as being in good company with Kingsley Amis as the only author to come anywhere near replicating the excitement and success of Flemings literary creation and for that I am grateful.
RIP John.
Hopefully we can get back to fresh new adventures each and every year with the new series.
Young Bond, it was nice knowing you.
I'd love Higson to tackle an adult Bond book though, I think he do very well.
Yeah, Higson and Weinberg should write an adult Bond book.
Considering what a formidable and mature beyond-his-years agent Bond is (just look at his Young Bond heroics at age 13-15) it is quite conceivable that Bond would be an early to mid-twenties Double O agent. Lots of potential for good stories here, in the Fleming timeline.
Actually just skipping ahead to Bond becoming a very young Double O would be what I would like to see. Bond as a young Double O agent I think would be very interesting and his post-war growth leading up to Royale.
I certainly hope IFP will ask him if they haven't already!
Welcome aboard.... i may not be as regular as most regulars on these boards - but nonetheless, a welcome to you indeed...
I can't rightly comment on your father's work, considering that I really have never read them yet.... I had a few of them that I had actually found in the garage of my old house, "For Special Services", "Role Of Honour" and "Nobody Lives Forever" - i guess someone before me was a Bond fan (but failed to tell me)... i never got around to reading them, because as a young man, eyes tend to drift away from books - to other things ;) lol......
but seeing as they are being reprinted, I will most certainly add them to my growing collection.......... my only gripe is that i wish they hired a better artist to design the covers lol - but that opinion is coming from an angry graphic artist lol (myself).... i actually used some of your father's titles as movie poster ideas - feel free to check them out here...
http://www.mi6community.com/index.php?p=/discussion/182/haserots-personal-bond-fan-art...-updated-61611#Item_30
again, welcome.... and don't worry about "the select few" here..... since i've been a part of MI6 i've been impressed with how civil these boards are, and how well the admins do to keep it that way..
Fellow Agents,
I think the good spy Saunders has this the top five nailed and frankly, after this, the rest are all very average and ranking them is pretty futile.
Unfortunately, I think the deterioration in quality could well be explained by the late, great John Gardner's fight with Oesophageal cancer.
He developed the illness whilst living in the US and fought a brave battle over a number of years eventually beating it. Unfortunately, treatment costs damn nearly bankrupted him and he was obliged to return to the UK and live in reduced circumstances.
I think this may explain him continuing with Bond when he should probably have stopped.
He was a lovely man and a great writer. His best works were not the Bond books but rather the "Moriarty" series, the "Oakes" books and the fabulous "Kruger" novels.
Regards,
Bentley.
So, where one should stop, in other words, what is his first 'bad' novel, because I want to read up to but not including that, and stop there.
Opinions?
Sounds like Scorpius is the last good one to read.
I also just got No Deals, Mr. Bond. Might stop there; might go further, who knows.
Heresy and Treason!
Never Send Flowers is one of the best!
I would go as far as Win, Lose or Die. From Brokenclaw onwards they do start to drop off pretty badly although The Man From Barbarossa and Death Is Forever have some interesting moments.
Never Send Flowers, Seafire and Cold are not up to much though and really only for completists.
All better than Faulks though.
As an aside, does anyone care to rank his two film novelizations? How do they rate in comparison to his original works?
Never Send Flowers not up to much?! You can't mean it @TheWizardOfIce! It's one of JG's best from his later Bond novels of the 1990s in my book.
Reading NDMB now. Hope to have it finished end of the weekend and then onto Never Send Flowers.