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Channel: Absolutely James Bond - "Breaking the Ice" - Your views on John Gardner's Icebreaker (1983)?
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Re: "Breaking the Ice" - Your views on John Gardner's Icebreaker (1983)?

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It's an interesting article.
I notice the article mentions numerous far-right groups attaining some degree of notoriety in the early eighties. I was a teenager then and we were only really aware of the National Front, so this is quite interesting, in a sociopolitical-historical fashion.
It's certainly likely that Gardner borrowed the name of the group and adapted it for the novel. The aims of each are entirely different however - although both share Nazi (or neo-nazi) overtones.
I like Icebreaker.
It's very like a Bond movie in construction: a pre-adventure sequence, a briefing, an extended chase or two, infiltrating the enemy camp, a journey to a fantastical hideout, torture, escape, the cavalry to the rescue, a resolving coda. You will find most of these ingredients in all Bond movies.
Although there are an early couple of chapters in Madeira which drag it is much pacier than Gardner's usual output; the group dynamic and the cross, double & treble crosses feels very fresh - it certainly was when I first read the book in 1984. Bond also feels very real in this one; he's fallible and gets hurt.
It always gets a thumbs up from me.


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