Summary

The third book in John Gardner’s James Bond series, published in 1983.

James Bond has never been on a mission like the one described in Icebreaker, not in Licence Renewed, not even in For Special Services. Posted by M to the freezing forests of northern Finland in winter, the indomitable 007 is obliged against his better judgement to collaborate with fellow agents of the KGB, the CIA and Mossad (the Israeli Secret Service). Their task: to discover, fix and, if feasible, eradicate a secret neo-Nazi core group whose worldwide terrorist activities have reached alarming proportions and whose headquarters, the Ice Palace, may well be across the border in Arctic Russia.

Right from the start, Bond sense that things aren’t what they seem. First there is Paula Vacker, Bond’s old Helsinki dalliance. But if Paula is a dalliance, why are two knife-wielding professionals waiting for Bond in her apartment? And why the three giant snow plows, lying in ambush on the frozen nocturnal roads of the North to make a sausage of Bond’s Saab?

Then there are his mission partners: Kolya Mosolov of the KGB, the chameleon of a thousand faces; ‘Bad’ Brad Tirpitz of the CIA, given to calling a spade a shovel, who trails Bond’s snow scooter in one of his own: and Rivke Ingber of Mossad, whose wiles and beauty entice Bond to one of the rare blunders of his career.

Behind them all lurks the mysterious Count von Glöda, he of the Nazi calling, deviser (among many things) of the ice torture, as deadly a power as Bond has encountered. For, unknown to Bond, von Glöda has made a pact with the KGB. Von Glöda’s part of the bargain? To deliver James Bond – alive if possible! The heirs of SMERSH, it seems, have long memories indeed.

John Gardner was a British journalist and best-selling author who published over 50 books.  He died in Hampshire in 2007.