- Title: Nobody Lives for Ever
- wiki: link
Throwback Tuesday takes us back to the mid-80s and a British spy with a license to kill. The fifth of John Gardner‘s James Bond novels, and what many argue was his best, Nobody Lives for Ever hit shelves between Roger Moore‘s last role as the spy in A View to a Kill and before audiences got their first look at Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights. That timing allows one to play a little with who you see cast in this version of James Bond. While absurd in places (what Bond isn’t?), the novel offers a hell of an intriguing premise by making Bond the hunted when the dying head of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. puts an open bounty out for the spy’s head.
Adding to the tension is the kidnapping of both Miss Moneypenny and Bond’s longtime housekeeper May who S.P.E.C.T.R.E. offers to trade for Bond. Along for the ride are Principessa Sukie Tempesta and her bodyguard Nannie Norrich who inadvertently get wrapped up one of the many attacks on Bond and choose to stay with him until the end.
Bond will need all of his wits, and a little luck, to stay alive, fight off the various hitmen, outmaneuver British turncoat Steve Quinn who is now working for SMERSH and corrupt local police with plans to sell Bond to S.P.E.C.T.R.E., and a betrayal by one of his lovely companions, in order to make it to Shark Island, save both May and Moneypenny, and make it out alive.
The novel is both action-packed and cinematic while featuring several European stops for her majesty’s top spy before ending in Key West and the secret island headquarters of Tamil Rahani whose only wish is to live long enough to see James Bond die (in an admittedly over-the-top manner). While aspects of it would need parring down, there’s certainly a tense action-thriller which could easily be the basis for an eventual entry of the movie franchise as well.