Seafire

Seafire by John Gardner

Another John Gardner penned James Bond book.  As I’ve mentioned in earlier reviews, my main goal when reading these books is to just get through them - as my OCD tendencies won’t allow me to read the Raymond Benson books dealing with 007 (which are supposed to be pretty good) until I finish the ones by Gardner.

Well, my reviews haven’t been too kind to the author’s offerings as of late, so I honestly wasn’t expecting much here.  What I got was a big surprise.  This is arguably Gardner’s best Bond book ever.  The author has been (unfairly) criticized by many since he “took over” around 1980 from Ian Fleming, who passed away in 1964.  Gardner, the critics claim, doesn’t spend enough time on the detail of the characters and/or situations, and tries to make the books more like the movies.  I would agree with that assessment, but I must say that I truly enjoyed the first few Gardner offerings, yet after the first three or four, he seemed to lose his groove, and the books became too much alike  (to be fair, there are many that would say the same about the James Bond movies).  But for whatever reason, this one simply seems to work very well.

There are lot of Bond cliches here.  He has a faithful “Bond Girl” by his side.  This one is named “Flicka”.  She’s a repeat from another Gardner book (can’t remember which one), which seems odd, but Bond is “serious” about this gal.  As I mentioned in my review of the last Bond book, it’s never a good thing for a Bond girl’s destiny when the super agent falls in love with her.  Then we have the Bond villain.  He’s a multi-millionaire German guy named Max Tarn, who was born right around the time of the end of Hitler’s dominion.  So this villain is out to resurrect the Nazi party and create “The Fourth Reich”.  OK.  How many times have we seen this happen in thrillers as of late?  Then, there’s the Double O section itself.  The powers that be are trying to dismantle MI6 as it once was.  The world has moved on, and it doesn’t really need an enormous agency of clandestine spies to attempt to keep the world safe.  So Bond’s role has “changed” much to his dismay, and he has to convince the higher ups that they’re going in the wrong direction, and they simply don’t know enough about the big, bad world as Bond and company do.

We also have M, who, at this point, the author might be trying to gracefully kill off.  M is old and feeble this time around, and a lot of the pages center around him at his home in bed as he tries to help his favorite agent combat the evil outside (and inside) the organization.  (NOTE: Like the movies when Pierce Brosnan took over, the Raymond Benson books had a female M, which leads me to the speculation that the Old M’s days may be numbered).  

Another character who’s absent from the John Gardner books is Q (or, as he’s referred to in Fleming’s novels, Major Boothroyd).  In his place is a female “looker” named Anne Reilly, who is affectionately known as “Q’ute”.  Q’ute and Bond seem to have an on again, off again romance throughout the books, but for the most part, the relationship is mostly business.  For whatever reason, her presence never works as well as the original Boothroyd.  True, she manages to furnish Bond with a tool or two that seems to somehow be exactly what he needs later in the story to save himself from impending doom, but if you think about it, that’s always been the case with Q’s gadgets in the movies as well.  I guess it was always fun to see the Desmond Llewelyn character make an entrance and do his obligatory quibbles with Connery on the big screen.  It never works that well with Q’ute in the Gardner books.

Yet despite all of these drawbacks, this book seems to work better.  Perhaps it’s because the plot never gets bogged down with unnecessary situations and keeps moving at a strong pace.  Gardner also manages to “leave the reader hanging” at the conclusion of most of the chapters.  This has always been his trademark, yet when you’re not enjoying a story, the effect is somewhat minimized.  Since this story is much stronger, the temptation is to keep going when you come to a stopping point at the end of a chapter.

On a slightly strange note, I’m curious to how fans of the books picture the secret agent of the Bond books.  Do they picture Sean Connery in the role?  Pierce Brosnan?  Or do they have a different personality altogether recreating all of the scenarios of the most famous super spy?  For myself, believe it or not, I always pictured George Lazenby.  For those that don’t know, he only lasted one picture, didn’t do that great of a job, and faded into oblivion after his fifteen minutes of fame.  Why Lazenby?  I guess it’s because the characteristics described of the make-up of James Bond by Ian Fleming seemed to closely match Lazenby’s looks. (There was a great artist’s rendition of what James Bond looks like many years ago that I came across in one of the James Bond compendiums).  Well, all of this to say, that I recently forced myself to forget Lazenby, and now picture current actor Daniel Craig in the role.  As weird as this sounds, this seems to help me enjoy the books a bit more.  Even the initial reaction to Craig taking over the role in the films was incredibly hostile, he’s since won audience’s over big time, and brings a sense of realism to the character that nobody else, even Connery, has been able to demonstrate.  The books have always diminished the invulnerability of James Bond, and rather making him larger than life, they’ve always focused on the more human side of his character.  Weird, I know, but it just works better for me.

So despite the familiarities that we’ve seen over and over again, in both the films and (especially) the books, this one works better than most. and managed to surprise me immensely.  I have one more Gardner to go, and am hoping for a repeat of the enjoyment factor.