A review of 'James Bond in Seafire' by John Gardner
Note: The following review was originally published at Amazon.co.uk on 23rd. July 2017. Link to original review: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/RCOEK6NDB7XVS?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srphttps://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/customer-reviews/R333W5679SKKA0?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp
James Bond is taking a Caribbean cruise with his latest squeeze, Fredericka "Flicka" von Grüsse, a Swiss intelligence agent. The relationship with Flicka is serious and during the course of this novel, Bond will ask her to marry him, which seems somewhat out-of-character. The liner suffers an explosion, and after some formulaic heroics, Bond joins Flicka in the lifeboat. Back in London, Bond is suspicious and brings the incident to the attention of his superiors on a top-secret watch committee run by the intelligence services, known as MicroGlobe One.
It develops that the liner is owned by an unscrupulous international arms dealer called Max Tarn, who appears to be of aristocratic Jewish heritage. The Tarn family seat is a dilapidated estate in southern Germany called Tarnenwerden, near Wasserburg am Inn, from which the Tarns were expelled during the Nazi era. Tarn is already a person of interest to the authorities and it is decided that Bond and Flicka will investigate him. It turns out that Tarn is a villain, and he is planning something - though what he actually is planning, the 'super-villain spectacular' inimitable to Bond stories, turns out to be a bit of a damp squib (pun intended). Oddly, despite his apparent Jewish ancestry, Tarn is an aspiring Nazi leader, which implies that this Tarn is perhaps an impostor, putting his whole antecedence in doubt, though it may just be that he is a self-hating Jew. The author makes heavy weather of Tarn's political aspirations, making it plain his own disapproval of the character's Nazi views, and this serves as the main motivation for Bond to stop Tarn.
Gardner was selected as an official Bond writer and therefore one of the successors to Ian Fleming. If I'm not mistaken, I think he was the next appointed after Kingsley Amis. As a writer, Gardner is plainly not of the same calibre, or even in the same league, as Fleming himself or Amis for that matter, nor any of the other adventure thriller writers of the same era, such as Alistair MacLean and Len Deighton. Presumably he was selected as an exemplar of the lowest common denominator: the type of writer whose leaden prose would have the widest appeal and therefore deliver the most profits. But he's still a puzzling choice. You would think that Deighton - the quintessential Cold War thriller writer - would have been a better choice, but who knows how these decisions are made?
Gardner, I detect, is fully on-message with the Nazis-as-cardboard-cut-out-baddies hysteria that was - and remains - common among people of his generation. The author wishes to portray anybody with Nazi sympathies as one-dimensionally villainous, to the point where a comparison is explicitly made with Dracula: Bond sardonically dubs Tarn the 'Prince of Darkness' (in counterpoise to the 'Renaissance Prince' that Flicka has him pegged as). Given Gardner's evident distaste for ethnicism and racism, it is quite ironic that he chooses to play up to a classic xenophobic stereotype used for villains of foreign extraction that could be considered unconsciously anti-Semitic (I say unconsciously because another thing about Gardner that is apparent from this novel is that he is very pro-Israel and, in one passage, even blames the British for the King David Hotel bombings of 1946). Originating from an old castle somewhere and seemingly smooth and charming, with a heavy foreign accent, Tarn does seem a bit like Count Dracula and the analogy is interesting in that, much like Bram Stoker's Dracula, Tarn is a malevolent force being chased by his nemesis, but the explicitly anti-Nazi stuff is the sort of thing that might not play so well with my own generation and later, and I certainly have become weary of it. It's unoriginal and seems simplistic and preachy.
The story is also bit too pacey for my liking. I realise this is aimed at a certain type of reader - it's the airport novel market - but there isn't much depth, instead the action jumps around from one location to another without much development of the characters. Bond is in the Caribbean, then he's in London, then he's in southern Spain, then back in London again, then to Israel, then Munich, then back in the Caribbean, etc. All of this running around by the main characters must have involved an immense amount of research, yet paradoxically Gardner does not seem to me to be a very imaginative writer. He writes visually, but the plot is dull (though, to be fair, it does pick up a bit about a third of the way in, when Bond finally confronts Tarn), and the motivations of the characters don't make sense. Perhaps a contributing factor is that this novel was written in the immediate post-Cold War period (which here Gardner calls the 'Tepid War'), and much like the Western intelligence agencies that exist in real-life, Bond and the other characters seem redundant, aimless, even slightly bored, and look like they are searching for a strategic mission and a reason to exist. Tarn is certainly a dangerous foe, but he is a criminal, not a spy. The author therefore has to talk up the Nazi factor: Tarn becomes a Nazi Messiah and, in the novel, neo-Nazis are practically poised to take over key European countries. That's the only way the premise can work as an espial alarum.
These observations aside, SeaFire is written competently and there are some isolated moments of really good descriptive writing. I also like the colourful way that Gardner describes some of the characters, though it's not very politically-correct and some people may find the author's perspective on women fossilised. Here's an example from page 99 [hardback first edition]:
[quote]"She wore a silver evening mini-dress with a diamond choker, but at first sight all they took in were the famous legs, long and incredible, reaching up forever and a day, for she was around six feet tall. Though enviously slim, she was beautifully proportioned, with a nut brown tan, and that other great attribute, the thick long black hair which had been her trademark in the old days.
"Then they saw her face.
"What had once been called both elfin and gamin by a hundred fashion journalists must have still been there under the livid bruises, and the obviously broken nose, for it was as though someone had used her features as a punch bag. When she spoke, there were traces of nasality, and a slight tremor."[unquote]
In the context of a popular thriller, that's smartly done, but even that basic standard is not consistently maintained.
Here's a better one from page 188:
[quote]"...Bond quickly gave the trio a thorough once-over. The bearded man was short and stocky, probably in his late forties with a fine weatherbeaten face. The woman could be any age between eighteen and thirty-five as she had one of those faces with a scrubbed look, dark hair that hung lank around her shoulders, so that it regularly had to be pushed back with a thin hand. The final member of the party was clean shaven, earnest-looking, with his hair beginning to recede. He had the manner of an academic, the shoulders slightly stooped, his eyes bright behind a pair of wire framed glasses."[unquote]
Rating SeaFire puts me in a quandary. This is the first of Gardner's novels that I have read, and I suspect he has written better. He also seems like a nice man with lots of varied experiences - a real 'writer's writer' - but this is not a good novel and I cannot give it more than two stars.
It develops that the liner is owned by an unscrupulous international arms dealer called Max Tarn, who appears to be of aristocratic Jewish heritage. The Tarn family seat is a dilapidated estate in southern Germany called Tarnenwerden, near Wasserburg am Inn, from which the Tarns were expelled during the Nazi era. Tarn is already a person of interest to the authorities and it is decided that Bond and Flicka will investigate him. It turns out that Tarn is a villain, and he is planning something - though what he actually is planning, the 'super-villain spectacular' inimitable to Bond stories, turns out to be a bit of a damp squib (pun intended). Oddly, despite his apparent Jewish ancestry, Tarn is an aspiring Nazi leader, which implies that this Tarn is perhaps an impostor, putting his whole antecedence in doubt, though it may just be that he is a self-hating Jew. The author makes heavy weather of Tarn's political aspirations, making it plain his own disapproval of the character's Nazi views, and this serves as the main motivation for Bond to stop Tarn.
Gardner was selected as an official Bond writer and therefore one of the successors to Ian Fleming. If I'm not mistaken, I think he was the next appointed after Kingsley Amis. As a writer, Gardner is plainly not of the same calibre, or even in the same league, as Fleming himself or Amis for that matter, nor any of the other adventure thriller writers of the same era, such as Alistair MacLean and Len Deighton. Presumably he was selected as an exemplar of the lowest common denominator: the type of writer whose leaden prose would have the widest appeal and therefore deliver the most profits. But he's still a puzzling choice. You would think that Deighton - the quintessential Cold War thriller writer - would have been a better choice, but who knows how these decisions are made?
Gardner, I detect, is fully on-message with the Nazis-as-cardboard-cut-out-baddies hysteria that was - and remains - common among people of his generation. The author wishes to portray anybody with Nazi sympathies as one-dimensionally villainous, to the point where a comparison is explicitly made with Dracula: Bond sardonically dubs Tarn the 'Prince of Darkness' (in counterpoise to the 'Renaissance Prince' that Flicka has him pegged as). Given Gardner's evident distaste for ethnicism and racism, it is quite ironic that he chooses to play up to a classic xenophobic stereotype used for villains of foreign extraction that could be considered unconsciously anti-Semitic (I say unconsciously because another thing about Gardner that is apparent from this novel is that he is very pro-Israel and, in one passage, even blames the British for the King David Hotel bombings of 1946). Originating from an old castle somewhere and seemingly smooth and charming, with a heavy foreign accent, Tarn does seem a bit like Count Dracula and the analogy is interesting in that, much like Bram Stoker's Dracula, Tarn is a malevolent force being chased by his nemesis, but the explicitly anti-Nazi stuff is the sort of thing that might not play so well with my own generation and later, and I certainly have become weary of it. It's unoriginal and seems simplistic and preachy.
The story is also bit too pacey for my liking. I realise this is aimed at a certain type of reader - it's the airport novel market - but there isn't much depth, instead the action jumps around from one location to another without much development of the characters. Bond is in the Caribbean, then he's in London, then he's in southern Spain, then back in London again, then to Israel, then Munich, then back in the Caribbean, etc. All of this running around by the main characters must have involved an immense amount of research, yet paradoxically Gardner does not seem to me to be a very imaginative writer. He writes visually, but the plot is dull (though, to be fair, it does pick up a bit about a third of the way in, when Bond finally confronts Tarn), and the motivations of the characters don't make sense. Perhaps a contributing factor is that this novel was written in the immediate post-Cold War period (which here Gardner calls the 'Tepid War'), and much like the Western intelligence agencies that exist in real-life, Bond and the other characters seem redundant, aimless, even slightly bored, and look like they are searching for a strategic mission and a reason to exist. Tarn is certainly a dangerous foe, but he is a criminal, not a spy. The author therefore has to talk up the Nazi factor: Tarn becomes a Nazi Messiah and, in the novel, neo-Nazis are practically poised to take over key European countries. That's the only way the premise can work as an espial alarum.
These observations aside, SeaFire is written competently and there are some isolated moments of really good descriptive writing. I also like the colourful way that Gardner describes some of the characters, though it's not very politically-correct and some people may find the author's perspective on women fossilised. Here's an example from page 99 [hardback first edition]:
[quote]"She wore a silver evening mini-dress with a diamond choker, but at first sight all they took in were the famous legs, long and incredible, reaching up forever and a day, for she was around six feet tall. Though enviously slim, she was beautifully proportioned, with a nut brown tan, and that other great attribute, the thick long black hair which had been her trademark in the old days.
"Then they saw her face.
"What had once been called both elfin and gamin by a hundred fashion journalists must have still been there under the livid bruises, and the obviously broken nose, for it was as though someone had used her features as a punch bag. When she spoke, there were traces of nasality, and a slight tremor."[unquote]
In the context of a popular thriller, that's smartly done, but even that basic standard is not consistently maintained.
Here's a better one from page 188:
[quote]"...Bond quickly gave the trio a thorough once-over. The bearded man was short and stocky, probably in his late forties with a fine weatherbeaten face. The woman could be any age between eighteen and thirty-five as she had one of those faces with a scrubbed look, dark hair that hung lank around her shoulders, so that it regularly had to be pushed back with a thin hand. The final member of the party was clean shaven, earnest-looking, with his hair beginning to recede. He had the manner of an academic, the shoulders slightly stooped, his eyes bright behind a pair of wire framed glasses."[unquote]
Rating SeaFire puts me in a quandary. This is the first of Gardner's novels that I have read, and I suspect he has written better. He also seems like a nice man with lots of varied experiences - a real 'writer's writer' - but this is not a good novel and I cannot give it more than two stars.
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