Brokenclaw - John Gardner 1990Summary- Bond is vacationing in Victoria when he meets a man called Brokenclaw Lee, by chance. Bond soon discovers that it was not quite so accidental, since M wants to send Bond on a mission to find five missing scientists who have worked on LORDS and LORDS DAY. LORDS is a new technology that allows the user to pinpoint the location of submarines over great distances and depths. LORDS DAY is the "antidote" that prevents LORDS from working. It turns out that Brokenclaw Lee is working for the Chinese government and has kidnapped the scientists. He plans on delivering the technology to the Chinese. Also, Lee is a major player in operation Jericho. This is a plot to use computers to crash the stock market to throw the world into financial chaos.
Bond and a Japanese agent, Chi-Chi, pose as two Chinese agents who have been captured. (Even though both of these people work for the Chinese government, one of them is British. What a lucky coincidence.) Bond and Chi-Chi discover Lee's plans, and the homing devices planted on them let the British and American governments know where they are.
A team is sent in, and all of the members are captures, except Lee, two of his main men, and a Chinese General who showed up to take the LORDS technology. With help from an American agent, Bond captures the two men and the general. However, he has to go alone to find Lee in a Blackfoot Native American Reservation. (Lee is part Blackfoot, and uses this place as a hide-out. Bond challenges Lee to one-on-one combat, and Lee chooses a torture challenge of O-kee-pa. In this, two barbed spikes are driven through both shoulders and both calves. Weighted buffalo skulls are then strapped to these, and the participants are hung, supporting the weight for twenty minutes. If they can stand that, then the shoulder weights are removed, but the calf weights remain and a race must be completed. If both contestants make it to the finish line, they each have a bow with a single arrow to kill the other man. Bond manages to kill Lee, but collapses. It will take a full year of therapy before he is back to normal again.
My Grade- A- This plot involves less action, and focuses more on deception that the good guys must use to get Bond deep inside Lee's operation. Only then can they hope to destroy him.
Best Moment The best moment is the O-kee-pa challenge. This is one of the more interesting challenges Bond ever goes through. It reminds me a little of the "torture maze" chapter from Dr. No. They are both very original.Back to Novels Page
