Thu 4 Jun 2020
A 1001 Midnights Review: JOHN GARDNER – License Renewed.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[5] Comments
by John Lutz
JOHN GARDNER – License Renewed. Rochard Marek, US, hardcover, 1981. Berkley, US, paperback, 1982. Published first in the UK by Jonathan Cape, hardcover, 1981.
After the death of Ian Fleming, the holders of the James Bond copyright bestowed upon John Gardner the honor and responsibility of moving the British master spy, along with his galaxy of gadgets and arch-villains, into the 1980s. This established thriller writer has responded admirably.
Here Bond is assigned to infiltrate the castle of the Laird of Murcaldy, a renowned nuclear scientist who has had meetings with an international terrorist known as Franco. Bond manages to deftly extract an invitation to Gold Cup Day at Ascot. Very English. He is off to the castle in the highlands, where he meets people with names like Mary Jane Mashkins and Lavender Peacock and affects the courses of nations with names like England, France, and America.
If this novel isn’t a Fleming original, it is still great fun. Everything Bond fans would expect is here: the eccentric, larger-than-life villain with his sexy and thoroughly evil female companion and preternaturally tough henchman; the seductive and seduced beautiful woman of questionable allegiance; the slyly sexual double entendre; the infusion of ultramodern technology; and the name-dropping of expensive quality brands of everything from perfume to handguns.
So artfully has Gardner penetrated and captured Fleming’s style that one can only wonder if Bond’s old nemesis, SPECTER, might somehow be involved. No doubt Bond’s boss, the enigmatic M, could tell us; but. as usual, he is tight-lipped.
Another recommended title in the new Bond series by Gardner is Role of Honor (1984).
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust
June 4th, 2020 at 8:28 pm
I found this one a bit of a disappointment, but the next one was good.
Gardner’s one time contempt for Fleming and Bond (he was a radical ex commando/ex clergyman when he created Boysie Oakes) showed through once in a while as when he set one at the French Disneyland.
ROLE OF HONOUR is one of the best though.
All I could think of with this one and the business with a Scottish laird were the scenes in the original CASINO ROYALE with David Niven in Scotland after M is assassinated with Deborah Kerr as M’s horny widow.
June 5th, 2020 at 3:17 pm
I have more or less given up on books by authors carrying on the adventures of characters created by others. The first few Sherlock Holmes stories by other people, starting with maybe Nicholas Meyer, were were a lot of fun, but when everybody started writing them, that’s when I pulled the plug on them.
There are exceptions. I think when the authors writing the sequels were/are already authors in their own write, then maybe I will read them.
John Gardner falls in that category, most definitely. The fellow who’s been writing the Nero stories after Stout’s passing, well all I can say is that his heart in the right place.
I did read one of Ace Atkins’ Spenser stories, but then I asked myself why. I haven’t read all of the Parker ones yet.
June 5th, 2020 at 9:28 pm
Goldsborough has done a few decent Wolfe books, and recently his version of how Archie and Wolfe met was well worth a read for any Stout fan, but generally I’d rather reread the originals.
Raymond Benson, a good writer on his own, did a fine job with his Bond run which are much closer to Fleming than Gardner was and bring back iconic characters like Rene Mathis and Marc Ange Draco in interesting ways.
I have written some Arsene Lupin pastiche in recent years (about ten actually) but they are all short stories not novels for the TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN anthologies. Like you quite a few pastiche just don’t cut it though once in a while you get something interesting like the Bulldog Drummond pastiche/continuation by Gerard Fairlie, who actually was Bulldog Drummond or Francis Gerard’s fine take of Edgar Wallace Sanders of the River.
It’s a tough call to make. William Boyd, Kingsley Amis, and Anthony Horowitz all wrote fine James Bond novels and Horowitz did excellent Holmes and Moriarity pastiche as did Michael Kurland, but too many just don’t seem to get it.
I did enjoy the Jill Paton Walsh Peter Wimsey books though they honestly were as much Harriet Vane books as Lord Peter.
I understand the temptation for writers and publishers, but for me I think I would rather create my own characters. Writing Arsene Lupin at novel length seems a bit like lily gilding.
If I were to write a book length pastiche I think it would most likely be someone obscure, or a good character I felt the original writer never got right.
June 6th, 2020 at 1:17 pm
I hope no one’s paying any attention to me when I make up rules for me as to what I will read and what I won’t. I don’t stick to them myself. The reason I come up with them is to pretend I have some control over what I read next.
I think that anyone who writes a pastiche or sequel to another writer’s characters or stories is doing it for love of the material, and as long as it’s on the up and up, what on earth could be wrong with that?
June 14th, 2020 at 1:03 pm
Gardner gives a very light treatment to the Bond character. You’d think he was trying to get him closer to the Bond that Roger Moore was making in those days, but he looks like a Don Corleone killer next to the Gardner copy!