My Gardner history here. And now...
When I was told the title of the book by Glidrose in the spring of 1988, I went into fannish mode (oh dear): you know 2 + 2 = 5. See, I thought the book was a clever tie in with the Skorpios character from the Victory role playing games - the Blofeld replacement, and head of TAROT, the SPECTRE replacement.
Well, it wasn't.
Vladimir Scorpius sounded like a classic James Bond villain. Linked with religious cult leader Father Valentine (clever name), Gardner was capturing the Zeitgeist in 1988. The corrupted TV evangelist was the villain
du jour (Tom Mankiewicz wrote and directed the 1987 film version of
Dragnet using Christopher Plummer in a similar role). I had heard that a similar character would appear in the upcoming Bond film, Licence Revoked (Prof. Joe Butcher anyone?) and liked the idea. My father picked up the first edition and brought it back and I remember being disappointed with the
completely different cover (larger format book, no classy illustration). I heard that the publishers issued a fake Avante Carte credit card as a promotional thingy but I never saw one of these. There seemed to be more of a push for this book - it was more readily available.
The book itself was a change in pace - sort of Moonraker mixed with Dr No. The mainly UK locations and pacing worked well for me. Gardner conjured a sense of atmosphere and mystery. The opening car chase from the SAS base was fantastic and the SAS character, Pearlman was the first successful supporting character in the Gardner books. Harriet Horner was a fun character. Things went downhill when the plot moves to Hilton Head Island - it is too silly. Fun, but silly. The downbeat ending is good. Scorpius is built up but does nothing and has no real presence. However, it was a continuation of the development of Gardner's Bond who by this time had sort of come into his own. A special intelligence operative who trains with Special Forces, drives a Bentley, uses an ASP 9mm, a renewed sense of the characters at SIS. All in all, there was a confidence about the writing that held sway.
This was the first Bond product out since the massive shot-in-the-arm that Timothy Dalton's debut had been. Rather like this period right now, we had come off a great Bond film, all things Bond touched turned to excitement and we looked forward to next year with a great sophomore Bond film and new Bond novel with huge anticipation. Then shooting in Mexico, the new Bond film promised to knock it out of the ballpark. We were told Bond was really chasing the blockbuster stakes, especially in the US. Only time would tell...
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