Licence to Kill was the first James Bond film since Moonraker to have a novelisation. The then-current Bond novelist John Gardner was commissioned to write the novel based upon the screenplay by Michael G Wilson and Richard Maibaum. Gardner was faced with a challenge because his books maintain the continuity of Ian Fleming’s original novels (albeit updated), and, in Fleming’s and Gardner’s continuity, Felix Leiter had lost a leg and an arm in a shark attack in Live and Let Die. As a result, Gardner’s book requires readers to suspend disbelief as James Bond comes to terms with his friend being maimed twice using the same method in a chapter aptly titled “Lightning Sometimes Strikes Twice”. Gardner, however, does not attempt to reconcile the return of Milton Krest, who was murdered in Fleming’s short story The Hildebrand Rarity.

The novelisation stays fairly faithful to the script; however, one key difference is that Bond does not use his famed Walther PPK as he does in the film. Instead Gardner gives Bond a Walther P38K. Gardner also notes that the PPK is not Bond’s favourite weapon and that it was taken out of service with the SIS several years ago. Additionally, Q has an extra scene, which takes place during the time when Bond is at Franz Sanchez’s Olimpatec Meditation Institute. In the scene Q teams up with a police captain and is involved in a raid on Sanchez’s palace. Although John Gardner had written, at this point, eight James Bond novels, this was actually his first to include Q. Prior to Licence to Kill, Q had only been mentioned a couple of times and had been largely replaced by his assistant Ann Reilly, better known as Q’ute.

The novelisation takes place outside the timeline of Gardner’s other Bond novels, as his next book, Brokenclaw, disregards the events of Licence to Kill. It also appears that the novelisation takes place sometime prior to Gardner’s novel Win, Lose or Die in which Bond is promoted to Captain (in the novelisation, as in the film, Bond is still a Commander).