John Gardner Sniper Series Purchase

One of my favourite John Gardner - James Bond paperback series is the Sniper series, named because of the sniper sight that appears on each book cover.  When this set was published by Coronet Books in the UK around 1986, Mr Gardner had only completed the five titles which are included: "Licence Renewed" (white cover), "For Special Services" (red cover), "Icebreaker" (black cover), "Role Of Honour" (blue cover) and "Nobody Lives For Ever" (teal cover).  

Meanwhile in Canada, General Books (linked to Coronet in the UK) concurrently published this series.  The covers of each title by General were almost identical to the Coronet printings, except strangely for "Nobody Lives For Ever" which had a red colour cover instead of teal.  So while there are five titles in this series there are six different covers to collect.

I've previously written a post about this series when I purchased a second Coronet copy of "Nobody Lives For Ever".   Today's post is inspired by the purchase of a second copy of "For Special Services".  It's not in quite as good condition as my current copy, but it's unread with a lovely condition cover and at just $16 it was hard to refuse.

Now I have two titles of a second series of this lovely set.

Two Forgotten Draft Post Stories

Today's post is a little different.

Back in early June of this year I received a fourth copy of John Gardner's "Icebreaker" in the mail featuring a skull on the cover.  I started writing the blog post below and then found yet another variant cover online and quickly purchased it.  Four copies became five.  This meant the post below became redundant and was saved as a draft only.  The story of these five covers published by Coronet and Coronet-General in the 1980's can be found here in the post that was finally released.

I've now re-opened this draft post and published some of what I originally wrote.  Any duplicated text copied to the other post has been deleted however I forgot two stories here which others may also find interesting.

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Firstly, here's two photos I was going to include when I received the fourth copy.  It shows all the different cover variations of this paperback I owned at the time:

Story 1:

In a recent post in the James Bond Collectable Books Worldwide group on Facebook a collector named Ian S. commented that he'd recently added a paperback copy of John Gardner's "Icebreaker" to his collection.  The cover image he included was this one:

I decided to contact him with "Hi Ian, I liked your recent post on the 'vampire' Icebreaker and then realised I didn't have a copy myself !  I have 3 different covers of this book but not a Coronet-General one matching yours.  Thanks to eBay I was able to remedy that situation this morning.  Thanks for the post, cheers Baz"

He responded with "You're welcome! It was thanks to your Piz Gloria website that I even knew of the alternative cover in the 1st place. I got one a couple of years ago, and thought the price on this one was too good to pass up. Then I realised it wasn't a sticker on the cover and double checked Piz Gloria to see if it was there.

Also, it's interesting that the distributed mark is in a different place."  He also added that "You have probably already noticed that the Canadian copy has the title in blue while the UK  edition is metallic."  He then sent this image:

Story 2:

After I'd purchased the similar copy on eBay, with the light blue title text, I asked the seller to please send the book well packaged so it didn't get damaged in transit.  She replied "I keep bubble wrap in business.  Will keep it well protected for the trip.  This book was my Dad's; he would have loved the idea of it going to Australia.  Enjoy"

Coronet Sniper Series Replacement

The first paperback printing of John Gardner's fifth James Bond adventure "Nobody Lives For Ever" was published by Coronet in 1986.  The cover features an image of a sniper sight aiming at a boat and a silhouette of Bond in front of "007" text.  

As the years have passed I've realised this printing is not very common.  It may have even had a limited release only in the UK as I never saw this edition for sale in new bookstores here in Australia back in the 1980's.  I only discovered this cover existed in the late 1990's.  

There were few websites displaying James Bond book covers back then, especially continuation novels.  And online websites selling books wasn't anywhere as big as it is today.  Finding this cover in a second-hand book store was a real surprise, especially as there were already four other titles with matching covers in my collection.  Those titles were reprints of the first four of Gardner's Bond adventures; "Licence Renewed" (white), ""For Special Services" (red), "Icebreaker" (black) and "Role Of Honour" (dark blue).   For want of a name I called these covers the Coronet Sniper Series.

Now I'm pretty picky.  The original copy I found wasn't in great condition compared to the other four I had in my series and it's always been a bugbear of mine.  It's taken a long time but recently I found and purchased a replacement copy.  Here's the two of them together.  The copy on the right is the new one.  It has a couple of texta marks on the back cover hiding the printed price but the spine is lovely and overall the copy appears unread.

And here's the new copy with the other four in the series.  The last copy, with the red cover, is the same title published by Coronet-General in Canada.  I still have no idea why they changed the colour from light blue/teal to red in Canada, especially as "For Special Services" was already printed in red, but it's an added bonus of this series.

Finally, this is the card that accompanied the book from the overseas seller.  I like these extra details from sellers.

The Life Of Ian Fleming

Tonight I unwrapped the last of my birthday presents.

This parcel contained a Companion Book Club edition of John Pearson's "The Life Of Ian Fleming".  First published by Jonathan Cape in 1966 it appears this book club edition was also published the same year.

John Pearson was also the author of "James Bond: The Authorized Biography" which is featured on the PizGloria.com website as a continuation novel.  That book was first published in 1973.

Well that's the end of my birthday gifts from my wife... until next year anyway.

As a postscript to my recent post on paperback cover variations of "Icebreaker" published by Coronet I just wanted to mention a comment made by Kate in the United States who was selling one of the copies.  When I explained to her that the books I had purchased would be travelling to Australia her response was "These were my Dad's; he would have loved the idea of them going to Australia.  Enjoy !".   I doubt she'll see this post however I believe they've gone to another good home.

"Icebreaker" Paperback Cover Variations

Back in 1983 when UK publisher Coronet released John Gardner's third James Bond adventure in paperback format the cover featured a white skull on a black background.

Initially I thought all first paperback printings had exactly the same cover, but several years ago I read John Cox's The Book Bond during a discussion he'd had with Dan Gale and discovered there was a slight variant cover.  This cover is now known as the "white fangs variant" and can be seen as a white area in both corners of the mouth of the skull.  

In the photo below the left is the "white fangs variant" while the copy on the right is the standard version.

At the same time as Coronet published these books in the UK, they were also published in Canada as Coronet - General Books.  Recently I discovered exactly the same printing variation occurred there too.  And two weeks ago I received one of the copies in the mail.  Here are the same covers from Coronet - General Books.

And just when I thought I had all variations of this cover a fellow James Bond book collector, Ian S., sent me a message explaining he'd found another variant.  I managed to find the same cover for sale online and last week this copy arrived in the mail.  As you can see below the title text for this variant cover on the left is a light blue colour.  While the cover on the right (a duplicated cover from above just for reference purposes) is the usual metallic title text.  Again this is a Coronet - General Books printing.

Surely these are all the different cover variations of this printing of "Icebreaker"... but I'm not holding my breath !

Piz Gloria Website Celebrates 10th Birthday

Today marks the 10th birthday of PizGloria.com.  There have only been a few additions to this website over the past year but I'm pleased that the website is still visited and referenced by book collectors and James Bond fans alike.  Hopefully with the release of Anthony Horowitz's new Bond novel "With A Mind To Kill" in May 2022 and perhaps another John Gardner reprint ("Icebreaker" ?) there's still more paperbacks to be added.

Some quick stats from Google Analytics about PizGloria.com over the last 10 years:

- There have been 45,601 visits

- Each visitor on average views 6.01 pages (that's 274,062 total page views over the years)

- The average time a visitor spends on the website is 3 minutes and 7 seconds

- The bounce rate is 54.93%.  This is the rate at which visitors leave the website without interacting (I imagine they've found my website and realised it's of no interest to them or they don't have any spare time at that moment to have a look).

I'd like to say thankyou to everyone who has supported my website, visited the website or been in touch with me over the 10 years, and I hope you visit again soon,

Cheers Baz

Weekend Book Hunt

Last weekend I drove around Melbourne to visit a few book stores and managed to purchase another James Bond book.  

The first store I visited was "Abra Card Abra - Roycroft Antiquarian Booksellers" in Kew.  (Sorry, I couldn't decide which photo to use below so I used both).

A while ago the owner decided to move the Bond paperbacks from the paperback section downstairs to the hardback section upstairs.  I thought it was an interesting and intelligent move.  In fact these are the only paperbacks on the upstairs fiction book shelf.

Unfortunately I had all these books, but this nice first edition of John Gardner's "Icebreaker" was calling my name so I couldn't refuse.  It's the second copy of this particular hardback I've bought in as many weeks.

The second store I visited was "Howard Bolton Bookseller" in Northcote.

I always enjoy catching up with Howard and discussing books and book stores.  As usual he showed me some Bond books that weren't on his shelves, and I took these photos of a copy of Ian Fleming's "Thrilling Cities" and of the books on his shelves.

Next up on the book hunt was "City Basement Books".  

I always walk down the stairs into this store with my fingers crossed.  I remember making a number of great purchases in this store when it was located just around the corner on Elizabeth Street.  No luck today though. 

And now some snaps of other stores I visited during my travels that day.

"Bradstreet's Books", Hawthorn (second-hand)

"Readings", Hawthorn (new books)

"Dymocks", Prahran (new books)

"Readings", Malvern (new books)

"Jeffreys", Malvern (new books)

"Books In Print", Malvern (new books)

"Corner Lamp Books", Moorabbin (second-hand)

"Dymocks", City (new books)

"Kay Craddock Antiquarian Bookseller", City (second-hand)

"Reader's Feast", City (new books)

"The Merchant Of Fairness", Balwyn (second-hand)