I was not pre-inclined to like John Gardner's second James Bond adventure For Special Services …, and I didn't. I missed Mr. Gardner's first conjuration of 007 but I believe it enjoyed considerable success, and I've little doubt that this one will too. Mr. Gardner is far too good a writer not to make a fair stab at the job. No mere arranger of other men's flowers, he is of course a thriller writer of the first water, author of many novels in many veins, and creator of that splendidly reluctant agent, Boysie Oakes. In For Special Services he resurrects SPECTRE and chucks in a mad millionaire, a plot to rule the world with the help of drugged ice-cream, killer ants, giant pythons and a no-holds-barred car-race. The glamour is supplied, significantly, by the daughters of old acquaintances….
All this is done with technical skill and some panache, but in the end Bond belongs so much to the 50s and early 60s … that to translate him to the 80s without making him grow up is an almost impossible task. Mr. Gardner effects a decent enough compromise, smudging over the passage of time by updating the technology but sticking firmly with the old style of plot, and modernizing Bond's externals in small ways while hardly touching his character. The result is very fair escapist stuff, but time and again I found myself asking the, I hope, not impertinent question, if this man wasn't called James Bond, how good a thriller would this be? And the answer, I'm afraid, is, not half as good as what Mr. Gardner is capable of giving us when he follows his own creative bent. Bring back Boysie Oakes!
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