Ian Fleming’s Legacy: John Gardner’s James Bond

From Simon Ward, September 2021 CRA Newsletter

By 1979 John Gardner was the successful author behind fourteen books, including an autobiography, two Professor Moriarty novels and eight instalments of his beloved parodic thriller series starring the character of Boysie Oakes. It was at this point that, rather like a summons from M, John was approached to write a new novel in the James Bond series.

Gardner’s Licence Renewed was the first Bond continuation novel since Kinsley Amis’s Colonel Sun in 1968. The world had changed since then, politically, culturally and technologically, and both Gardner and Glidrose Publications (now Ian Fleming Publications Ltd) agreed that Bond should be brought into the 1980s – as John put it, “picking up where Ian Fleming left off”.

Crucially, John took an objective approach to writing the world’s most famous spy. He ignored the movie adaptations and any pre-conceived notions about Bond, instead focusing on telling breakneck-paced stories rooted in reality. He prided himself on his research, especially the tech that is so much a part of James Bond’s DNA. In the acknowledgements to Licence Renewed John states, “I would like to point out to any unbelievers that all the ‘hardware’ used by Mr Bond in this story is genuine. Everything provided by Q Branch and carried by Bond – even the modification to Mr Bond’s Saab – is obtainable on either the open, or clandestine, markets.”

It was this dedicated fact checking and a wonderful ability to work even unlikely real-world gadgets into his prose that made his Bond writing so assured: “Unused weapons of all makes, types and sizes, were contained in the Armorer’s amazing treasure trove of a store, and he produced one of the old Brownings, still in its original box, thick with grease and wrapped in yellow waxed paper. No mean feat, as this particular gun has long since ceased to be manufactured… Bond completed the reassembly, ran the mechanism back and forth a couple of times, then picked up one of the magazines containing seven Browning Long 9mm rounds that would shatter a piece of five-inch pine board at twenty feet.”

Following the success of Licence Renewed in 1981, John Gardner would go on to write a further thirteen 007 novels, plus two novelisations. Len Deighton called him a “master storyteller” and his work in keeping James Bond’s legacy alive cannot be underestimated. It is this legacy that Ian Fleming Publications Ltd is proud to celebrate with a brand new edition of Licence Renewed released in time for its fortieth anniversary.

James Flynn series by Haris Orkin

You Only Live Once

From Zero to Hero …  James Flynn is an expert shot, a black belt in karate, fluent in four languages and irresistible to women. He’s also a heavily medicated patient in a Los Angeles psychiatric hospital. Flynn believes his locked ward is the headquarters of Her Majesty’s Secret Service and that he is a secret agent with a license to kill.

When the hospital is acquired by a new HMO, Flynn is convinced that the Secret Service has been infiltrated by the enemy. He escapes to save the day, and in the process, Flynn kidnaps a young Hispanic orderly named Sancho.

This crazy day trip turns into a very real adventure when Flynn is mistaken for an actual secret agent. Paranoid delusions have suddenly become reality, and now it’s up to a mental patient and a terrified orderly to bring down an insecure, evil genius bent on world domination.

Once is Never Enough

The Perfect Hero For A World Gone Mad .... An old enemy seeking revenge sends James Flynn back around the bend and into a wild adventure even more deranged than his last one. Once again he believes that his psychiatric hospital is the headquarters of Her Majesty’s Secret Service and that he is a secret agent with a license to kill.

With the help of Sancho, his reluctant sidekick, Flynn confronts a mysterious new adversary just as unhinged as he is and far more deadly. The entire planet is in danger and the only one who can save it is someone no one believes.

The fate of the world now rests in the hands of a man suavely dancing on the thin line between objective reality and batshit crazy.

The great era for spy novels ends with the death of John le Carre

From The Sydney Morning Herald:

‘‘When you enter the secret world and you are engaged in the intensive examination of your enemy, your opponent, you in a sense begin to know him and think about him not just as an opponent but some kind of secret sharer.’’

That was John le Carre, who has died at the age of 89, talking to The Age in 2001 about his own experiences with the British secret service before he embarked on his long and more successful career as a spy novelist and fierce critic of the hypocrisy and moral and political decline of his country – and, indeed, the west. He died of pneumonia on Sunday morning (Australian time) just as the British government was stumbling towards the final deadline for Brexit, a development he loathed.

In a sense how he defined his experience running agents in East Germany for MI6 determined the nature of his novels and particularly the three great Cold War novels featuring his best-known protagonist, George Smiley: there was a lot of talk, a lot of thought and a lot of smart people trying to get a handle on what the Soviet Union and its spymaster, Karla, were up to, and then outwit them. And, of course, they were frequently hindered by a traitor - a mole - in their midst.

read more here from The Sydney Morning Herald and John le Carre