Icebreaker (John Gardner’s Bond #3)

Gardner’s Bond, in the two books prior to Icebreaker, had me questioning the Fleming estate for allowing the brand to be mishandled and made into a bad caricature of itself, following the disappointing camp model of Roger Moore’s tenure in the role in film. This book redeems Gardner (at least up to this point in his chronology). While he attempts in vain to mimic Fleming’s engaging description of the personal habits of Bond and unparalleled presentation of locales that would have been exotic to the average British or American audience, Gardner creates a fast-paced, suspenseful story of intrigue and deception in his third outing. As with the last two books, his representation of Bond’s relations with women is laughable at best, but in this effort Gardner gives a more believable relationship between Bond and the leading female, while utilizing his entrenched belief that Bond is a sucker for women to work against him as the book progresses. It’s not a great book… but it’s a readable adventure for fans of the literary Bond.

With his first two novels in the series, Gardner stuck to the standard Bond formula. But with his third novel, Icebreaker, he stayed outside the formula and established all the key elements that would comprise his 007 series: Bond actually involved heavily in intelligence and espionage and a plot with a real-life political or historical background, instead of a big adventure with the fate of the world in the balance and an evil multimillionaire. I don’t understand why this bothers so many people. There’s dozens of Bond stories following the same routine, formula -the same story with different characters and locations- and Gardner at least tried to do something original and different with the character.

In Icebreaker, Bond is assigned to a team also consisting of American, Israeli, and Russian agents. Their mission in the arctic is to monitor a convoy of stolen high-grade military equipment from a Russian army outpost to a WWII-era bunker serving as the headquarters of the National Socialist Action Army, a well-organized neo-Nazi paramilitary group responsible for a number of terrorist attacks and assassinations. Bond quickly learns that the mission has been compromised. The team has been infiltrated by enemy agents. Additionally, the KGB is using the operation as a scheme to capture and deliver Bond to Moscow.

The story is extremely fast-paced. The action is tense and well-written. It’s fun watching Bond put the pieces together and doubt who he can trust. The locations are an original and fresh change of pace for Bond and really enhances the story’s atmosphere and suspense, as there is nothing glamorous or ritzy about Bond struggling to survive in the frozen forests of Finland and Russia.

There’s a couple minor problems. If the Soviet Union was having problems with their weapons ending up in the hands of a terrorist faction, would they really go to the UK and US for help? And it would seem that a NATO or Russian special ops team would be more suited to carry out a reconnaissance of the enemy base in the middle of the arctic than a team of intelligence agents. But then, this is a Bond story, so I don’t expect realism to get in the way of entertainment.

Overall, one of Gardner’s best Bond novels and just a really great Cold War adventure for 007.

Theyre getting worse! Bond book #1 was solid, book 2 less so, and this one weak and flimsy. The Icebreaker initiative takes too long to get going, and the plot unravels in ridiculous fashion. This is like the worst Bond films: Spy who Loved Me, Die Another Day, etc. The cold environment, the interagency intitiative aspect, and the secret base were interesting, but the other aspects were too detrimental.

It has been my goal to read all of the Bond books in chronologic order. I usually but allow three months or more to pass between the end of one book and the start of the next. I enjoyed this book just as much as any of the previous ones. If you like the 007 books it is likely that you will too!

When I read “License Renewed” I thought ‘well, this is disappointing, no more James Bond novels for me’, then I gave “For Special Services” an opportunity and I was glad to do so because it was way better tan the first Gardner’s Bond novel, now Icebreaker is keeping the good pace from FSS, it was a really fun book with lots of twists every freaking page, the pace is like a mistery movie, every character could be the bad guy (or girl), there were more crosses and double crosses than a Catholic church! I hope the remain of Gardner’s Bond books that I haven’t read are as fun as this one.

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