[For Special Services is] John Gardner's second venture into Bond territory…. Gardner's Bond is to some significant extent reshaped, probably influenced by the extraordinarily successful series of films freely adapted from Fleming's work which has lightened the original Bond image, adding not only humour and tongue-in-cheek burlesque but also charm and even sympathy to the somewhat unpleasant, sadistic slant in the original characterization of this twentieth-century man of action. These highly entertaining fantasies require a particular skill to invent, a skill with which John Gardner seems well endowed, especially the capacity to blend sufficient genuine technological knowledge with a vivid imagination that makes the impossible sound feasible…. In For Special Services Bond is once again pitted against the Gothic threats devised by SPECTRE…. Bond having in the past slain the original SPECTRE leader, Blofeld, a successor emerges in protean shape, and Bond, aided by every kind of technical...