Licence to Kill (James Bond) [Paperback]

1989's Licence to Kill was the first Bond film to be novelised since Christopher Wood's James Bond, the Spy Who Loved ME and James Bond and Moonraker (Film-Script Adaptation) from screenplays that had little or nothing to do with the eponymous books. Having run out of original Fleming titles to develop to feature length, unused elements of the novels were incorporated into an original screenplay that built upon Dalton's acclaimed and authentic portrayal in The Living Daylights. As the incumbent 007 author, a reluctant Gardner was approached by Cubby Brocoli to unite the literary and film series.

Score: 6/10. The plot sees Bond disavowed by his own service when he seeks personal revenge against Sanchez, the central american drug lord who maims his old comrade (the newly married) Felix Leiter. 007 teams up with ex-US Navy pilot Pam, chasing Sanchez and his smuggling confederate Krest from the Florida Keys to the (Mexico City-like) corrupt Isthmus City.

Perhaps ahead of its time on celluloid, post Daniel Craig it feels refreshingly naturalistic. The sheer mundane nastiness of Sanchez's operation drops Bond into the 'real world' more convincingly than some of Gardner's spyworld yarns. The fast and well subplotted narrative plays to the writer's strengths in relating exciting action, detailed machinery and evocative locales (eg warehouse, Wave Krest, sniper sequence and high speed finale). Gardner makes the most of Major Boothroyd/Q's first appearance in his books (he's usually 'offscreen', supplanted by his deputy Q'ute!) and Bond's standard Boldman alias in the 80s gets a nod.

A frustrated Gardner was working from ever changing pre-shooting scripts, so your favourite line or scene may be absent. Pam's characterisation and description are especially hesitant, but he goes to great lengths to clear up how-people-get-where: his then recent research of the Florida Keys for Nobody Lives For Ever (James Bond) pays particular dividends. While dialogue wasn't among Gardner's strengths, here the script is to blame for Bond's "me hearties", "inordinately" and "booze", plus a lot of Moore-ish quips that mercifully didn't reach the screen.

However Gardner's diffidence is evident with a lack of spark in the writing. He gets in a few digs, with 007 musing that "he must look like a movie stuntman" and repeatedly criticising the misrepresentation of Stinger missiles. While only Krest's name and boat are borrowed from Fleming's The Hildebrand Rarity, the rerun of the shark tank scene from Fleming's Live and Let Die made for a great film scene but awkward literary canonicity: poor Gardner was reduced to nibbling off Leiter's prosthetic limbs.

Given Leiter's greater tragedy and the noirish tone of early Fleming novels, it's a shame there's none of the Spillane-esque 'this time it's personal' that Dalton conveyed on screen. Bond just seems miffed. Otherwise he's every bit the glib, thinking man's spy the author latterly depicted, with his pick of a parade of randy crumpet. Having not seen 007 smoke since Nobody Lives For Ever, he now claims he's down to 5 a day but refrains here, and is reluctantly issued with a Walther P.38K. Increasingly teetotal, he unforgivably consumes a "virgin colada" and claims he's "never really been that heavy on the drink. Good wines, yes." Understandable words for a recovering alcoholic writer but not our hero!

With 7 original 007 novels under his belt and another 7 (plus Goldeneye) to go, Licence to Kill (unknowingly) brought the first half of Gardner's contribution to a satisfactory if not earthshattering end. His 80s bestsellers had begun by remaining largely faithful to Bond's character and Fleming's plot structure. As the cold war ended, a greater departure would reinvigorate the series: Win, Lose or Die (James Bond).

I did not own a complete set of the John Gardner Bond books. All the titles are not available in the US, so a matched set from the UK was just what I needed.

John Gardner was the first author to write Bond books following the death of Ian Fleming, with the exception of Kingsley Amis, who published Colonel Sun under the pseudonym Robert Markham back in the 1960s.

Gardner is responsible for ten or so Bond novels which are original stories, which vary from the brilliant and Fleming-like 'Role of Honour' to the yawnsome 'The Man from Barbarossa'. It was with uncertainty that I started reading Licence To Kill - firstly because I have only vague memories of the film starring Timothy Dalton, and secondly because Gardner's canon of Bond works has been so hit and miss. Unfortunately I was right to be uncertain, as this is certainly the weakest Gardner book that I have read.

Maybe because this is essentially 'the novel of the film', the book justs seem to be a series of setpieces with little hanging between them, and the characterisation that is so evident in Fleming's novels and some of the other Gardner novels is just completely absent. Bond is reduced to a two-dimensional character with few plus points (and even fewer novels), and the storyline is just completely unconvincing. There are blatant rip-offs of scenes from other books (Felix Leiter versus a shark, anybody?), and I really struggled to reach the end of the book, let alone find it enjoyable.

If you want a decent Bond novel, then buy some of the other reissued Gardner stories (Role of Honour, Scorpius and Licence Renewed are all great stories almost up to Fleming's standards), or, even better, if you haven't read the original canon, do so. But avoid this at all costs - it's not worthy of having the name 'Bond' on the cover.