COLD --- Tiny Dancer Question
BondFan777
Posts: 4MI6 Agent
In COLD, exactly who is Tiny Dancer? At the end of Part 1, M tells Bond that an enemy agent, code-named Tiny Dancer, is working for COLD. But how does that resolve in Part 2? Is Tiny Dancer the person who was blackmailing COLD and then needed to be killed by blowing up the plane? Or is it someone else?
Thank you.
Comments
Paging @Silhouette Man .....
Edit- BondFan777, Silhouette Man is our resident John Gardner expert.
Thank you, @Barbel. I'll have to consult my copies of Cold/Cold Fall again and get back to this thread with an answer - if I can find one! 😊
Perhaps it is Elton John escaping from the Kingsmen
This is not to the point of the discussion but as it is about Cold. I have just found the audio book from you tube. I have only listened to Ian Flemings own books up to now so am not sure if I will enjoy it as much. I hope so.
Apologies for not getting back to this thread sooner - please excuse my tardiness. As I suspected when I first read this question, the Tiny Dancer reference only occurs in the notably different text of the US edition where the novel was also alternatively titled Cold Fall. The reference to Tiny Dancer is completely omitted in the UK edition of the novel where it was titled Cold. The following article by Nick Kincaid (originally on the now defunct site 007Forever) makes this clear and I have quoted the relevant section below:
As mentioned in the quoted section above Nick Kincaid goes into more details in his Cold book review on the substantial differences between the UK and the US editions of the novel. Here is the relevant part:
Although this doesn't really answer your question as to who Tiny Dancer was in the end it does show the differing approaches taken for whatever reason between the UK and the US editors and publishers. In this instance the US edition text appears to be more the more complete one, story wise.
@Silhouette Man would you say this means the American edition is the definitive edition one should have in their collection?
does the UK edition have any content the American doesnt?
seems surprising for a James Bond novel, I'd expect the other way round. But then again the American edition of Thrilling Cities has a whole James Bond short story the UK edition doesnt, so its happened even with Flemings books
I'd say (like most things in life) it's a little more nuanced than that, @caractacus potts. There are significant differences between both versions of the novel. Therefore having a copy of each and reading them side by side or one after the other would ensure that you get the fullest extent of the text possible. I think I'm right in saying this is a phenomenon particularly of the John Gardner Bond novels. I know there were the "race edits" that led to cuts in the US editions of LALD and DAF but the differences in the Gardner novels seem to be much less well known. As well as Cold, I've also noticed significant differences between the UK and US editions of Role of Honour and The Man From Barbarossa, particularly the latter, the text of which was heavily truncated in the US edition. This I put down to the US publisher Putnam being aghast that it wasn't "the same mixture as before" as Gardner mentions on his website.
That was a really long review you linked @Silhouette Man but I enjoyed reading it. While I wouldn't ever claim Cold is a Gardner classic it's in his top 5 for me and is an excellently drawn novel, a nice closure to the era. As Kinkaid suggests, what on earth took him so long to regain his early heights?
Glad you liked that review of John Gardner's Cold, @chrisno1. I first discovered these excellent articles and reviews by Nick Kincaid back in 2001-2002 on the now defunct 007Forever website. Thankfully Matt Sherman's site has salvaged these articles from oblivion. Nick Kincaid's work was certainly an influence on my own Bond blog article writing along with the likes of such notables as Kingsley Amis, O.F. Snelling, Raymond Benson and Umberto Eco (who helpfully coined the term "Bondologist"). I'm not sure what became of Nick Kincaid as he sadly seems to have disappeared from the online Bond world. I remember reading his reviews and articles with great interest as a younger fan. If he ever gets to see this I'd like to say a grateful thanks to him.
I agree that Cold is one of the best Gardner Bond novels. Gardner's health troubles in the 1990s are fairly well documented and that combined with the sheer number of Bond novels he wrote may have affected the quality of the writing. Perhaps spurred on by the fact that it would be his last novel (and it was until Day of Absolution in 2000) Gardner decided to pull out all the stops and deliver a worthy last hurrah for his Bond. The novel was also quite prescient considering it predicted the rise of populism and a more authoritarian approach to US politics in the form of General Brutus Clay.