''Role of Honour'', first published in

1984 Events January * January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. * January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeas ...

, was the fourth novel by John Gardner featuring Ian Fleming's

secret agent Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...

.MI6 :: The Home Of James Bond 007
/ref> Carrying the Glidrose Publications copyright, it was first published in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape and in the United States by Putnam.

Plot summary

After receiving a large inheritance, James Bond 007 is accused of improprieties and drummed out of the British Secret Service. Disgusted with his former employers, Bond places his services on the open market, where he later attracts the attention of representatives of

SPECTRE Spectre, specter or the spectre may refer to: Religion and spirituality * Vision (spirituality) * Apparitional experience * Ghost Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Spectre'' (1977 film), a made-for-television film produced and writ ...

who are quite willing to put their one-time enemy on their payroll. But the whole thing was a hoax, just a plan to get Bond inside the enemy's organization. Prior to joining up, Bond spends a month in

Monte Carlo Monte Carlo (; ; french: Monte-Carlo , or colloquially ''Monte-Carl'' ; lij, Munte Carlu ; ) is officially an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco, specifically the ward of Monte Carlo/Spélugues, where the Monte Carlo Casino is ...

with Miss 'Percy' Proud, a

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

agent who teaches him everything she knows about programming languages and computers in general. This background allows Bond to attract Jay Autem Holy, an agent of SPECTRE who left

the Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. It was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase ''The Pentagon'' is often used as a meton ...

, faked his death, and later started a computer game company that creates simulations based on real-life battles and wars. Bond's allegiance to SPECTRE is periodically questioned throughout the novel, even at one point going so far as to send Bond to a

terrorist training camp A terrorist training camp is a facility established to train individuals in the ways of terrorism. By teaching them the methods and tactics of terrorism, those conducting such facilities aim to create an "army" of individuals who will do their b ...

(known as "

Erewhon ''Erewhon: or, Over the Range'' () is a novel by English writer Samuel Butler, first published anonymously in 1872, set in a fictional country discovered and explored by the protagonist. The book is a satire on Victorian society. The fir ...

") to see if he has 'the right stuff'. Proving his worth, Bond becomes involved in a plot to destabilise the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

and the United States, by forcing them to rid the world of their nuclear weapons. What SPECTRE leaders Tamil Rahani and Dr. Jay Autem Holy suspect, but never fully realise is that Bond's resignation is false. Along with Bond, the Secret Service plays a vital role in foiling SPECTRE; however, Rahani, the current leader of SPECTRE is able to escape Bond's clutches by parachuting out of an airship over Switzerland.

Characters

* M * Bill Tanner * Q * Persephone 'Percy' Proud: Formerly Mrs. Jay Autem Holy. Percy is a

agent who went deep undercover by marrying Holy. After Holy's

faked death A faked death, also called a staged death or pseudocide, is the act of an individual purposely deceiving other people into believing that the individual is dead, when the person is, in fact, still alive. People who commit pseudocide can do so by l ...

, she teams with Bond to teach him everything she knows about Holy and everything she knows about programming languages and computers in general. * Jay Autem Holy: supposedly died in a plane crash, prior to the events in ''Role of Honour''. He now goes under the name Jason St. John Finnes and is secretly an agent of SPECTRE. Holy is an elite computer programmer once working for

The Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. It was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase ''The Pentagon'' is often used as a meton ...

; he now owns and manages a software company that develops computer game simulations based on real-life wars and battles. He is the former husband of Percy Proud and current husband to Dazzle. Holy is killed by Rahani after finding out he was betrayed. * General Rolling Joe Zwingli: is an accomplice Jay Autem Holy and long-time friend. He also was supposedly killed in the plane crash. Zwingli is killed by one of Rahani's personnel after finding out he was double-crossed. * Tamil Rahani:Part American, part Lebanese, he is the chairman and principal shareholder of Rahani Electronics and secretly the head of SPECTRE. He manages the Erewhon terrorist training camp along with his right-hand man, Simon. Unlike most of the villains in a James Bond novel or film, Rahani actually lives and flees from capture. Bond is later informed that Rahani was secretly having a love affair with Dazzle, Holy's second wife. * Freddie Fortune: is an informant for Bond that he uses to get closer to Holy. * Cindy Chalmer: is a programmer who works for Holy at Endor. She is in league with Percy and an informant for her and the CIA. * Peter Amadeus: is a programmer who works for Holy at Endor. He later escapes with the help of Bond and is used by the British Secret Service to one-up SPECTRE. He later takes a job within the Secret Service as a computer programmer.

Cars

Bond purchases a brand new British racing green Bentley Mulsanne Turbo with magnolia interior. Likewise with the Silver Beast, Bond had CCS outfit the car with a long-range telephone and a hidden weapon compartment. Bentley had apparently requested that Gardner not outfit the car with any gadgets other than the telephone.

Publication history

* UK first hardback edition: October 1984 Jonathan Cape * U.S. first hardback edition: September 1984 Putnam * UK first paperback edition: 1985 Coronet Books * U.S. first paperback edition: May 1985 Berkley Books

Reviews

'' Kirkus Reviews'' dismissed the book as "a ragged quickie that's cartoon caper/sleuth action most of the way through (like an old episode of TV's '' The Avengers''). Virtually no humor, virtually no suspense, and virtually no charm or sexiness in old 007 - making this by far the weakest of Gardner's somewhat pre-sold fabrications, with some extra appeal only for computer fans."Available online.
/ref> ''The West Coast Review of Books'' said that "John Gardner does a good job of work in picking up the torch from the late Ian Fleming, but the freshness of the early Bond books is missing; also, 007's predictable heroics have begun to bore. One can accept a charmed - and charming - character just so long." ''

The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...

'' crime critic Derrick Murdoch wrote that although Gardner "could outperform Fleming easily in most technical respects he lacked Fleming's gift for simple-minded razzle-dazzle extravaganzas and Penthouse-style dream girls." He called ''Role of Honour'' "something of a disappointment, although some of Bond's old admirers may welcome it." He complained that the novel was both familiar and confusing. Long-time Gardner admirer and Listener crime critic

Marghanita Laski Marghanita Laski (24 October 1915 – 6 February 1988) was an English journalist, radio panellist and novelist. She also wrote literary biography, plays and short stories, and contributed about 250,000 additions to the ''Oxford English Diction ...

said "John Gardner has gradually worked himself into his own role as owner-creator of James Bond, but his Bond is more intelligent, more sensitive than the original." Novelist Jessica Mann, writing for ''British Book News'', said ''Role of Honour'' "hits the spot and will give great pleasure to fans both on the page, and, presumably, on the screen."

References