Licence Renewed by John Gardner

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


John Gardner was chosen to continue the print version of the James Bond franchise (dread word!) and ended up writing more novels that Bond's own creator: Ian Fleming. A total of fourteen novels and two novelisations of Bond films.

Licence Renewed was his first effort. Whilst critical opinion was at best lukewarm, the book sold in good quantities and that was all the publishers wanted.

Apparently Gardner was given the task of modernisng Bond, bringing him into the eighties. As a result he has some grey on the temples but this token gesture to Father Time does not affect his drinking, womanising, fighting skills, love of speed and gadgets or anything else. So it does end up being rather an empty gesture.

The plot is Bond-by-numbers. There is a megalomaniac - a Scottish laird of murky origins who, handily, happens to be one of the world's top nuclear scientists as well as being completely barking - a young and endangered beauty (the laird's ward) and a huge villain, a Scottish giant called Caber. No, Bond does not toss him. Suspicious meetings between the Laird and one of the world's top terrorists are monitored by the secret services and Bond is unleashed on the cispirators. It is no spoiler in any Bond-related product to say that this is an uneven contest which can have only one winner.

The writing is fairly humdrum, recognisably Bond but with few sparks or fireworks to lift this beyond the ordinary. The occasional attempts to update some of the language fails dismally in conversations, Bond ends up sounding rather crasser and would-be trendy than is his wont.

It isn't a patch on the originals but it will satisfy Bond fans wanting something featuring their idol which they haven't read before.





View all my reviews