The Dancing Dodo

by John Gardner

World War II scattered the wreckage of countless war planes across the countryside of Europe. Thirty years later they are just half buried, harmless scraps of junk. Except one. One is different. Planned in Hitler's final madness, it is upon us now - "the bombardment that will open like a thunderclap at night." First to be hit by the Doomsday fallout are the men who investigated the Dancing Dodo, a B-26 bomber that had crashed and been buried since the end of World War II. Now, thirty years later, the deadly mechanism has started to work again. Only hours remain before terror takes you hurtling towards an utterly chilling climax!

Genres: Thriller, Fiction, Mystery, Historical Fiction, Suspense, Mystery Thriller, Military Fiction

322 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Before coming an author of fiction in the early 1960s, John Gardner was variously a stage magician, a Royal Marine officer and a journalist. In all, Gardner has fifty-four novels to his credit, including Maestro, which was the New York Times book of the year. He was also invited by Ian Fleming’s literary copyright holders to write a series of continuation James Bond novels, which proved to be so successful that instead of the contracted three books he went on to publish some fourteen titles, including Licence Renewed and Icebreaker.

Having lived in the Republic of Ireland, the United States and the UK, John Gardner sadly died in August of 2007 having just completed his third novel in the Moriarty trilogy, Conan Doyle’s eponymous villain of the Sherlock Holmes series.

Reviews

[Pramod Nair · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written by John Gardner before his James Bond continuation novels, The Dancing Dodo is a post World War II thriller mystery set in the Europe of late 1970s. Not one of the best thrillers from John Gardner still some amount of suspense and mystery that the novel generates while describing the unearthing of a World War II era warplane and an undocumented Nazi secret plan can induce some interest in WWII fiction enthusiasts.

Actual Rating: 2.5/5

[Geoff Boxell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this book when it came out in 1978 c/o the good old, but now extinct Book Club Associates.
I know I enjoyed it then as it was a lot different from most other spy/adventure/crime books.
Due to being retired I am having to cut back on buying new books so have started re-reading some of my 2500 books. I am glad I pulled this one out, dusted it off and gave it a read. Surprisingly I remembered quite a lot of the plot. Others have outlined the fact that it is about the wreck of an American bomber discovered in the Romney Marshes in the 1970s (and, my, how technology has changed since then - having to make phone calls from public call boxes and the like). What, at first, seems a quite straightforward matter soon becomes very complex and murky, especially once they find that the bomber has an unusual cargo and that the dead crew are, in fact, all still alive.
This book may be dated, but it is still worth the read.

[Victor · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.7 stars.A pretty good thriller with a very intriguing mystery at its core . It has spooks in every sense of the word ! A long vanished american b26 , crews who should be dead but are alive and well, rotting corpses in 2nd world war uniforms bludgeoning people with very pistol, bouts of influenza , ex Nazis working with CIA, a hush hush Brit ops and another nazi ops...what's the mystery that ties it all together ?!! Almost everything is explained in the end but the journey is a bit cumbersome at times with the profusion of names,dates and characters.
However not everything is explained and I am already beginning to see the holes half an hour after finishing it.This was my first Gardner and the judgement is that he is in Jack Higgins,victor canning class...not in Lyall or Halls.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

an entertaining thriller from john gardner published in the mid to late 1970's which is based around a WW2 nazi plan that wasn't implemented fully and comes back to life 20 years later.
i'm sure i read this a fair number of years ago and enjoyed it at the time, re-reading it again the story does feel slightly out dated.
it is not one of the best novels that JG wrote and is one of a sequence of novels from the similar time featuring hang-overs from WW2, but still worth a read.

[Tom Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably one the best books I have read in a long time! Great plot and character development. Very hard to put down, since you really want to find out what happens. No plot details since I don’t want to spoil anything for you. Just read it!

[Oscar Maquito · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5/5

[Larry West · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great novel. Could not put it down.

[Mark C. Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

very intriguing and well written.

[Kamas Kirian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this years ago in high school, and it was an OK novel. Set in modern times, it's about a crashed allied WWII bomber with a special cargo that's about to be exposed in Britain. I don't remember a whole lot more of the specifics other than there is a small twist at near the end involving one of the bomber's crew.