The Hero: James Bond; The Bond Girl: Lavendar Peacock; The Villain: Anton Murik; Supporting Characters: Mary Jane Mashkin, Caber, “M”, Moneypenny, Q`ute, Bill Tanner, Franco; Locations Covered: London, Scotland, France. First Published: 1981
After more than a decade without a new Bond novel, the literary franchise was resurrected with the release of License Renewed. Yes, the body was resurrected, but the spirit wasn`t there.
Gardner was a spy thriller novelist in his own right before picking up the Bond franchise. His effort with License Renewed is commendable, and it should be noted that the book stayed on top of the New York Times best seller list for 52 weeks. But overall, this entry is a mixed bag.
The plot centers around the investigation into Anton Murik, a world famous, rather infamous, nuclear physicist. His plans for an `ultra safe` nuclear reactor have made him the laughing stock of the nuclear science community. Leaving in disgrace, he vows to prove to the world his ideas can work. Even if it means mass murdering billions.
Accompanying Murik, at most times, are, as usual, beautiful women. Lavendar Peacock is his niece, and his ward. She`s also the rightful heir to the Murik estate, but Anton has cheated her out of that. Then there`s Mary Jane Mashkin, Murik`s confidante. A fellow nuclear physicist herself, both she and Murik spend a lot of personal time creating a little fusion of their own, though Mary Jane is more than happy to try and get Bond to do the same with her. He refuses.
Bond is more interested in how Murik`s supposedly inferior horse, China Blue, is winning races she`s not favored to win. It`s really almost an irrelevant plot point, but it does finally get Bond into the castle estate of Anton Murik. There, Gardner commits his biggest mistake of the book. He uses a standard cliche seen in so many Bond movies or spoofs: he gets the villian to tell just about every detail of his secret plan and then does not shoot or kill Bond right away. Instead, he spends more time trying to figure out ingenious ways to kill Bond when simply putting a gun to Bond`s head and pulling the trigger would do the job.
After getting all the details of Murik`s plan, Bond tries to make an escpae from the grand castle to warn M. Caught, he`s eventually put on a plane with Murik to head to a fashion show in France. There, all Bond knows is that he must escape from Murik and stop the assasination of some female due to take place at the show. At first Bond believes that the female is royalty, but he soon realizes Murik plans to have Lavendar killed, and it somehow all ties into Operation Meltdown.
As villians go, Murik is standard. I didn`t buy Gardner`s reasoning on why a man like Murik would murder millions or perhaps billions just so the world could see how safe his reactors would be. The logic and rationale simply isn`t there. Mary Jane Mashkin doesn`t come off much better. She is essentially a female Murik, just with less characterization. Lavendar Peacock is woefully written. One of the worst written and must useless Bond girls in any 007 book . Much of the dialogue between James and Lavender consists of “Oh, my darling James.” Or, “James, my darling”. No one uses words and phrases like that. Only Caber seems to get any good of the good lines, and most of his are indecipherable because of his accent.
Some of the problems with License Renewed would only get worse as Gardner continued making more novels. Bond belongs in the age range of mid to late 30`s, not 57 as Gardner puts him. There`s an unfamiliararity with Gardner`s Bond, simply because we`ve always known of Bond in a certain way, and in a certain age range. There`s also a lack of fire in this Bond. It`s almost as if Gardner can`t grasp who Bond is or is just apathetic towards him. There almost comes across a rather blase approach to Bond in this book. Gardner`s strong points in this book include interesting plot set ups, and action sequences, but when it comes to decent characterization, it appears Mr. Gardner`s license was revoked.