Bond. James Bond. 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.
In May 1987, a month before Timothy Dalton would make his Bond debut in The Living Daylights, writer John Gardner released his sixth novel in the continuation series. It’s a book of beginnings and endings: it’s the last to be published by Jonathan Cape, who had been printing Bond books since Casino Royale and, with the exception of the novelisations, the first to use the agent’s name in the title. To date, it’s also the last.
Despite the uniqueness of the title in the Bond canon, Gardner was not a fan of it. Later describing it as “dreadful,” alternative publisher suggestions were reportedly Oh No, Mr. Bond! and Bond Fights Back. Part of me absolutely loves these titles, even if Oh No, Mr. Bond! sounds like it would be a comedy caper in the style of the Carry On films. (For the record, Gardner’s own choice was Tomorrow Never Comes, vaguely foreshadowing the title of the 1997 film Tomorrow Never Dies).
The Cold War may have been getting quite cold indeed by the late 1980s, but Gardner takes a classical approach taken in NO DEALS, MR. BOND. In a move straight out of the cinematic universe, there’s a cold open in which Bond is on a mission (called “Seahawk”) to extract two women who have been on a mission in East Germany.
The primary plot picks up nine years later, as M explains the true details of Seahawk. Dubbed Operation Cream Cake, it was a so-called ‘honey trap’ in which four women and one man were to use their wiles to not only spy but entice high-ranking Soviets to defect to the West. The operation failed spectacularly: the honey was exposed, everyone got sticky and now they are being bumped off one by one. M tasks Bond with an ‘off the books’ mission to find the surviving members before the cream curdles (so to speak).
“One day, James Bond, one day all the ghosts of the old SMERSH will rise up and crush you. That will be vengeance.”
While Bond initially believes that former Cream Cake target Colonel Maxim Smolin is behind the attacks, it turns out he and several other Soviet defectors are being sought by General Chernov, an agent of the disaster artists formerly known as SMERSH. Yes, our old frenemies have risen their ugly heads — again. It’s probably where this book, along with much of Gardner’s Bond writing, gets its reputation for being a bit ‘wash, rinse, repeat.’ Yet for me it just makes it all the more enjoyable. I tend to read these for pure escapism, so honey traps, unambiguously evil organisations and convenient escapes are the checkboxes that make for pure Bond.
Of course, in another grand tradition, none of these titles have anything to do with the book itself. In a surprising chaste series of encounters — especially given the presence of both Ebbie Heritage and Heather Dare — Bond is set upon, entrapped captured and ultimately victorious in his mission. Like most of the adventures of this era, it seems to wrap up before you’ve had a chance to blink.
Yet the devil is always in the details, from the broad Scottish character ‘Jacko B’ to the obligatory casual racism of a trip to Hong Kong. (Yes, there’s a chapter actually called ‘Chinese Takeaway’). A prize point is in discovering that, at some stage, Bond “had been taught” to smash his “hand with full force into the dog’s genitals.” Clearly that was taken in lieu HR’s sexual harassment induction.
When it was released in 1987, some reviews were less than kind. Roger Moore has retired from his Bond involvement,” wrote one critic on Kirkus. “It’s time for Gardner, who’s now just going through the motions, to do the same.” Time has been much kinder to this adventure, perhaps because we’ve seen and read less satisfying adventures in the decades that followed. NO DEALS, MR. BOND represents 007 at his most reliable.
James Bond will return in…Scorpius
