NO DEALS, MR. BOND

Gardner's sixth James Bond novel forgoes the series' customary doomsday scenario and comic-strip villain, reviving 007's old nemesis SMERSH for unadorned spy vs. spy chills. But instead of producing a streamlined thriller, this stripping down only reveals the tiresome, rusted mechanics at the heart of Gardner's Bond incarnation. After a suspenseless prelude depicting Bond whisking away two lovelies from East Germany, Gardner jumps five years ahead to a meeting between Bond and M. There M—in Gardner's hands so thin a character as to deserve his non-name—details 007's new mission: to track down the Eastern bloc agents who have killed and mutilated two members of Cream Cake—a disbanded operation in which five teens born to deep-cover British agents seduced and spyed on top Communist operatives—and to protect the three Cream Cake members still alive, two of whom are the women Bond rescued five years before, the third of whom is male, whereabouts unknown. After obligatory/perfunctory interactions with Moneypenny, May, and the new female Q, Bond rounds up ex-Cream Caker Heather Dare (the usual juicy nubile) in London and flies with her to Dublin, where the two track down female Cream Caker #2. Oddly, Bond beds neither woman (is Gardner trying to signal that Bond, and the 007 series, has lost all virility?). Odder still, Bond positively blunders into capture by crack GRU agent Maj. Max Smolin. And oddest of all, as Bond surveys the living room of the mansion where Smolin takes him for questioning, Gardner unveils what must be one of the strangest character quirks in modern fiction: "Bond was always deeply suspicious of rugs." That senseless observation, symptomatic of a sleepwalking author, presages this novel's one surprise—Smolin turns out to be a British double agent—and a slew of predictable turns, winding up with Bond slaughtering a lot of SMERSHers in Hong Kong and winning the day through little wit or even brawn, but a hefty dose of plain dumb luck. Roger Moore has retired from his Bond involvement; it's time for Gardner, who's now just going through the motions, to do the same.