Listed below are my ranking of the 007 continuation novels penned by John Gardner. Gardner was the author selected to revive James Bond in print following a one-off in 1968 by Robert Markham, which was a pseudonym for Kingsley Amis. Gardner's novels ran from 1981-1996. In my humble opinion, Gardner's best Bond novel was about on par with Fleming's average works.
Gardner started out in his Bond writing career leaning heavily on gadgets, but gradually got away from those gimmicks. Some of my biggest complaints with his writing was that he seemed to either get too technical, as he was an ex-Royal Marine commando, or use stale cliches for cliffhangers and plot twists. In the example of Brokenclaw, the novel is moving along just fine and is actually one of his better works until the ending when he has our hero making the most foolish decisions a person could make, and the worst part is he doesn't even try to provide some sort of explanation for Bond's motives.
Here is my rank for the best to worst James Bond novels by John Gardner:
1. No Deals, Mr. Bond
2. Death is Forever
3. Icebreaker
4. Scorpius
5. The Man from Barbarossa
6. Cold Fall
7. Never Send Flowers
8. Brokenclaw
9. Role of Honor
10. For Special Services
11. License Renewed
12. Win, Lose or Die
13. Seafire
14. Nobody Lives Forever
14. Nobody Lives Forever
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