No Deals, Mr. Bond

No Deals, Mr. Bond, first published in 1987, was the sixth novel by John Gardner featuring Ian Fleming's secret agent, James Bond. Carrying the Glidrose Publications copyright, it was first published in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape and in the United States by Putnam. It was the last Bond novel to be published in Britain by Jonathan Cape, ending an association dating back to the first Bond novel, Casino Royale in 1953.

No Deals, Mr. Bond has the minor distinction of being the first and, thus far, only non-novelisation James Bond novel to incorporate the agent's name into the title.

Plot summary

No Deals, Mr. Bond begins with a mission in the Baltic Sea dubbed "Seahawk", which involves James Bond stealthily extracting two women that have completed an assignment in East Germany. After accomplishing his mission, the book continues five years later with Bond being called in by M to learn more background into what those women were doing there before being extracted. Their mission, dubbed Cream Cake, was a honey trap that involved getting close to top Soviet personnel as a means to not only spy for the British Secret Service, but to secure the defection of 2 highly ranking Soviet officers, an act that the Soviets occasionally performed against countries of the West. Involving 4 women and a man, the operation was considered a complete debacle that ended with the members being found out. After being extracted and given new identities, however, two of the women were discovered to be gruesomely murdered. Bond is subsequently sent by M, "off the record", to find the remaining members of Cream Cake before they suffer the same fate.