"This is a straight search-and-destroy job, 007." M met Bond's gaze directly. "Kill as many of them as you can."M orders 007 to Canada to collect the butcher's bill on a spate of CIA/KGB reprisal killings as separatist unrest rocks the country. Bond and sultry FLQ freedom-fighter Bijoux Montagne must destroy the ROULETTE sleeper network cell-by-cell as terrorists strike Montreal and saboteurs menace the top-secret Avro Arrow jet program. In the high Arctic, 007 and his sadistic SMERSH counterpart Koniev face off in a savage reckoning that will tip the Cold War balance of power.
Jamie Mason is a Canadian sci-fi/fantasy short-story author and novelist whose works are characterized by absurdist themes and an exaggeratedly fatalistic world view. His stories have been featured in On Spec, Abyss & Apex and the Canadian Science Fiction Review. His young adult sci-fi novel ECHO was published in June 2011 by Drollerie Press.
A great Bond adventure that moves along at a cracking pace. Bond is ordered to Canada to dismantle the Russian spy circle code-named ROULETTE. And the order is very clear:
"Your job is to operationally compromise Roulette. I want it smashed to pieces, you hear?... Kill as many of them as you can. That's an order."
Mason cleverly weaves Canada's greatest technological achievement -- and it's greatest technological failure -- into the centre of the story and gives it a sinister reason for shutting down. Interference by a foreign power. The Avro Arrow should have been a great success -- but it was SMERSH all along!
I feel Mason may have missed a trick by not putting Bond in an Avrocar, but that may have given the story a more Roger Moore feel. As it was I heard Timothy Dalton's voice in my head whenever I read Bond's words.
There are a few mild anachronisms -- e.g. at one point Bond says, "I see what you did there." -- but none that derail the story.
And I learnt a new word: yomp (to march with heavy equipment over rough terrain).