Role of Honor

As a Bond fan who counts the movie A VIEW TO A KILL as one of his favorite entries, it should come as no surprise that ROLE OF HONOR was at one time one of my favorite of the Gardner books. My favorite Gardner 007 novel is the first one I ever read ICEBREAKER and so I had very high hopes for this novel. Although ROLE OF HONOR does not live up to the promise of the previous outing I still found it an entertaining read and one I enjoyed very much. It is also one that clearly left its imprint on the 1985 Bond movie A VIEW TO A KILL. Not only do we have a plot involving computers (now very dated with PCs being referred to as Micros throughout) but we also have a fight on a blimp. Of course two years later the 007 picture reenvisioned the plot of GOLDFINGER with microchips replacing gold, Silicon Valley replacing Fort Knox and the final battle with the villain revolving around an airship instead of an airplane. One area where ROLE OF HONOR does fall flat is in the relative lack of action with a rather weak training camp sequence and a fight aboard the airship and its somewhat rambling incohesive plot. What we do have though is Bond battling SPECTRE once more and an interesting introduction to c haracters that would reappear in Gardner's novel (and a firm fan favorite) NOBODY LIVES FOREVER. This is far from the best Gardner and can probably best be summed up as an interesting experiment by the gifted author that ultimately failed to truly deliver. Ultimately though time has not been kind to this Bond novel. Incidently this book's plot bares more than a passing resemblence to Deighton's BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN - nuclear war games becoming real, Supercomputers, a deranged American and his private army.

Not John Gardner's best, but certanly not his worst. The plot and villians could be spruced up a bit to make it better. At least SPECTRE is in it. This 007 book is very complex and only should be read by true 007 fans!

The plot to this novel is pretty intrigueing and it's good to see Bond square off against SPECTRE again. The book does have some bad points, but all in all it's one of Gardeners better Bond novels.