Bond. James Bond. Is there a name more synonymous with spying, tuxedos, and shaken cocktails than the British secret agent? Join me as I read all of the James Bond books in 007 Case Files, encompassing Ian Fleming and beyond. For Your Eyes Only: there’s spoilers ahead.
Frozen tundras, sexy double agent, Nazi villains and a title that gives you chills. Now on his third James Bond adventure, John Gardner’s ICEBREAKER is an outing that may seem familiar to fans – and that’s just half the fun.
While Licence Renewed and For Special Services divided critics and fans alike, Gardner got back to basics with this book. First published in 1983, thirty years after the publication of Casino Royale and in the same year that both Octopussy and the rival Never Say Never Again were released to film audiences. It was the Year of Bond if ever there was one.
Gardner’s novel may not get the high profile that the contemporary films received, but there’s a lot to love here. On the most basic of levels, it concerns Bond joining a CIA, KGB and Mossad alliance of spies (dubbed ‘Operation Icebreaker’) to bring down the National Socialist Action Army (NSAA). Led by Count Konrad von Glöda, the fascist collective have been running a violent and effective campaign across the globe to bring down communist leaders by any means necessary.
“Have those followers of the dark Nazi Age returned from their graves to wreak vengeance on their former conquerors?”
In an especially exciting prelude chapter, Gardner establishes that those means tend to involve a fair bit of killing. Yet these aren’t your grandfather’s Nazis. I mean, not your grandfather. Someone’s grandfather. Seeing themselves as “architects of the Fourth Reich,” NSAA leader Glöda is a self-styled “new Fuhrer, a Nazi Moses, there to lead his children back to their promised land.”
(Source: The Book Bond)
Now, a few years ago the idea of a organised group of Nazis re-seeking power was the domain of sci-fi and speculative fiction. Reading this in 2020, the idea of a hate group getting collective support reads as almost too close for comfort.
Thankfully, Gardner manages to keep us on the right side of fantasy thanks to a solidly created villain. Very much in the same vein as previous enemies – indeed, Bond spends a few pages comparing him with past villains such as Goldfinger, Hugo Drax and, of course, Blofeld – Glöda’s motivations are both unambiguous and global in nature.
Glöda is also responsible for one of the more classic torture scenes in Bond history, a tradition Fleming started when Le Chrivre strapped 007 to a wicker chair back in the beginning. Here it’s torture by icy water, as the book’s increasingly multi-layered title suggests:
“The crash of ice around him, the red-hot, blinding liquid, then agony, as the body became aware again. Out, swinging and dripping, gasping, every centimetre of him torn to shreds. The brain which, so far, had computed extremes of temperature, pain like nibbling animals, snakes and needles, had, finally, hit on the real source of pain. Cold. Dead cold. A death by slow freezing.”
By the end of the sequence, Bond isn’t even sure if he’s given up the relevant information. Like Casino Royale, he’s left to ponder the trust of one of the women in his life – and looks aren’t what they seem.
Which might be one of the defining characteristics of this outing: it’s constant twists and turns. Just when you think that you’ve got a handle on who someone is working for – be it love interest Paula Vacker, CIA Agent Brad Tirpitz, or Mossad agent Rivke Ingber – they will flip and be working for the other side. Even that is no guarantee that they aren’t actually what you thought in the first place, or a third option hitherto unseen. Some kind of map is probably needed in the back-matter to make sense of their various pathways.
In the wake of all of this, the ending may feel a little bit anticlimactic. The broader adventure over, Bond confronts his enemy in a chapter literally called “Loose Ends.” Nevertheless, it’s one of the strongest Bond stories in Gardner’s run up to this point and, on a personal note, it has made me excited about reading 007’s adventures again.
James Bond will return…in Role of Honour.
