For Special Services (1982) – John Gardner

John Gardner’s second 007 novel, updating Ian Fleming’s James Bond for the 1980s, is on the book shelf this week, and delivers the crisp, solid, sex and violence filled thrill ride we’ve come to expect from England’s top spy. This story, set largely in America, sees the return of Bond’s old nemesis, SPECTRE, with the…

Better Off Dead (1985) – Savage Steve Holland

John Cusack and Savage Steve Holland did two movies together, Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer, and both of them came along at just the right point in my life, I was a teenager at the time, and could totally relate to all things Cusack’s characters were going through. In Better Off Dead Cusack…