LICENSE TO DIE

In Orkin’s farcical thriller, a patient in a mental hospital who believes he is a spy stumbles upon an international conspiracy.

James Flynn is a patient at the City of Roses Psychiatric Institute in Pasadena, California, and has been for more than 20 years; he is utterly convinced he is a “super spy with a license to kill” and that the mental hospital that houses him is the headquarters of His Majesty’s Secret Service. Despite his condition, he has a penchant for thwarting evil plots that threaten the world, a bizarre and hilarious habit that will be familiar to readers of this extravagantly comedic series. James is unexpectedly transferred to Hornitos State Hospital, a dangerous facility housing rapists, murderers, and serial killers—his relocation is orchestrated by Mendoza, a former assassin for a drug cartel who harbors a long-standing grudge against James and is obsessed with killing him. While at Hornitos, James meets his female counterpart, Caitlyn Valentine, who claims to have been a secret CIA agent and who believes she is hunted by a shadowy group that intends to usher in an “apocalypse” by igniting a war between Iran and Israel. The author masterfully blurs the lines between fact and fantasy, plausibly presenting the ostensibly delusional as possibly true. One never doubts that James suffers a fraught relationship with the real world, but it might be this condition that makes him such a brave and effective crime fighter. The novel is loaded with clichés—they are not deployed out of a lack of authorial imagination but as a sendup to the hoary genre to which it belongs. James’ delusions are obviously drawn from a campy interpretation of James Bond—he calls himself a “double 0” agent (“Double 0’s have a license to kill. Everyone has a license to die”). The story is marvelously entertaining, and one can enjoy this delightfully funny satire without having read its predecessors.

A deeply funny parody of the classic spy thriller.