ROLE OF HONOR. - A James Bond Novel by Gardner, John

New York 1984, Putnam, US First edition, hard bound in dust jcket, VG/VG cond. 6x9, 304 pp. 4th in the new James Bond series. ------- In John Gardner's most exciting adventure yet abandons his 007 status, resigns from the Service, and heads south for Monte Carlo in his new Bentley Mulsanne Turbo, in search of a new ROLE OF HONOR.------- So begins the most ingenious and deadly mission James Bond has ever undertaken in his illustrious career. For whatever M and Bond know, in private, the world intelligence agencies soon know it too: James Bond is for hire, to the highest bidder. So does a man, long presumed dead, who was once America's foremost military computer expert. So does an American war hero, also presumed dead, General Rolling Joe Zwingli. And one Tamil Rahani, an Arab electronics millionaire of shadowy background. And last, like a hideous phoenix rising from the infernal ashes, a criminal organization known only by its initials...Is it conceivable? James Bond in the employ of SPECTRE?In the service of his new masters Bond must pass a series of diabolical tests, some computerized and some (when has it been otherwise for our hero?) in the form of the most beguiling group of sirens he has encountered since the halcyon days of Pussy Galore and Honeychile Rider. Finally, in the unlikely setting of a Goodyear blimp drifting over the city of Geneva, Switzerland, where a world-powers conference unwittingly holds the fate of humanity in its grasp, James Bond and his dread foes meet at last in their deadliest confrontation.