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The Dancing Dodo
June, 1976.
The wreckage of World War Two plane The Dancing Dodo is found in remote British marshland.
Inside are the remains of six bodies.
When Wing Commander David Dobson is called in to investigate, he thinks it will just be a routine case, with some dull paperwork to complete.
But things soon start to take a sinister turn when it emerges there is no record of the Dodo having gone missing - and the men apparently identified inside are all still alive.
Dobson teams up with Colonel Bud Hackstead, the American officer in charge of the investigation, yet things only get more baffling.
Just what was Dodo’s original mission?
Why are the bodies it has hidden for so many years not who they say they are?
Why do so many people Dobson and Hackstead talk to end up dead?
When Dobson’s search for answers starts to turn up top secret letters from The Third Reich, he begins to suspect the mystery runs much deeper than he originally suspected...
Is The Dancing Dodo Hitler’s final weapon?
A tense and tough suspense thriller from the author of several James Bond novels.
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1519542488
The wreckage of World War Two plane The Dancing Dodo is found in remote British marshland.
Inside are the remains of six bodies.
When Wing Commander David Dobson is called in to investigate, he thinks it will just be a routine case, with some dull paperwork to complete.
But things soon start to take a sinister turn when it emerges there is no record of the Dodo having gone missing - and the men apparently identified inside are all still alive.
Dobson teams up with Colonel Bud Hackstead, the American officer in charge of the investigation, yet things only get more baffling.
Just what was Dodo’s original mission?
Why are the bodies it has hidden for so many years not who they say they are?
Why do so many people Dobson and Hackstead talk to end up dead?
When Dobson’s search for answers starts to turn up top secret letters from The Third Reich, he begins to suspect the mystery runs much deeper than he originally suspected...
Is The Dancing Dodo Hitler’s final weapon?
A tense and tough suspense thriller from the author of several James Bond novels.
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1519542488
362 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1978
22 people are currently reading
65 people want to read
About the author
John Gardner
113 books179 followersBefore 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 2, 2015
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
Actual Rating: 2.5/5
July 31, 2017
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.
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.
July 5, 2018
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.
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.
March 31, 2018
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.
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.
September 5, 2023
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!
May 17, 2020
Great novel. Could not put it down.
November 6, 2025
very intriguing and well written.
March 13, 2012
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.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews