All Comments on 'License to Kill'

Fantastic. I wish I could give it more stars.

Amazing story!

5

'It was, oh, three years from graduation'.... just a simple query.... this statement...does it mean ' he was three years away from graduating.? or.. He had finished graduation three years back? cos my understanding of the language tells me i would use this sentence in the first case.

It was a unique story, but too depressing for me to say that I enjoyed it.

He was duped into marrying a government whore, who lied to him about their entire relationship and cheated on him repeatedly. That was bad enough, but then he was tortured for two years and ended up mentally traumatized and physically disfigured. I don't know how he could be civil to Clarissa after all that. She might've rescued him... after two years... but she was entirely responsible for exposing him to that kind of danger in the first place.

However, I think the big problem with this story is... Susan.

You narrated everything about their relationship and I don't think she had a single line of dialogue, so she felt woefully undeveloped as a character. She needed to be someone fun and vivacious that could put a spark back into his life, after enduring so much misery. Instead, they had a bland relationship, didn't exactly fall in love and just coasted along for years. Even in the epilogue, there's no mention of them having kids, which was important because that's something Clarissa had been intentionally denying him.

I liked the way he got the bar back for Susan from the mob, but again it was all narrated which sucked all the emotion out of it. That could've been a dramatic scene, as well as her gratitude later when she realised he'd done that for her.

As for the bit about the book being published... the antagonists were just faceless bureaucrats so there was no sense of catharsis in getting revenge against them. They might have ordered Clarissa to find a naive husband, but she was the one that did it, then betrayed him repeatedly.

Wow. Fantastic. Managed to make me even have sympathy for his wife!! TC ireland.

A great story to while away some time and forget the world at large. For some reason it reminded me of Jezzaz's "Stone Cold" (on SOL.net) and Rakiura10's "My Game of Two Halves". Both stories deal with power and hubris, and both have a wife who betrays the person they married. I'm still digesting it to write any meaningful comment, but I can say thank you for writing it.

Very, very good - much like Ted Allbeury. Gritty and dark, with a ver appropriate ending. Thank you!

I wasn't a huge fan of Ingrams, but I really loved this one. More than that, I can imagine this actually happening.

Good reading. Thanks.

You've been in the U.S. too long. Americans say “college”, while you Brits say “university” or, more colloquially, “uni”.

PD-Nice to read something without the usual jarring assaults on the language. Thanks again, for that.

L77

So yes, I'm commenting as Anonymous. But that's only because I don't "do" any social media accounts... Well done Jezzaz. Well done. I have no higher compliment to offer.

Liked story. Sad ending. Wish love had triumphed.

Very good. Though some pages where kind of wordy.

I did skim in some middle pages especially the torture part with the Saudis.

But over-all I got the gist.

I happenstance did react to Clarissa showing up in Lucas' house.

If I were Lucas, I could have just asked what she's doing here but stopped her

from telling me the whole story just want to know what she came for.

She could have just told Lucas to read the book in the USB when the time came.

I liked the BTB in the end -- Burn The Bureaucracy!

Thanks jezzaz for your effort and sharing of this.

Engrossed

This is by far one of the best stories I’ve read in a long time on this site. I honestly think it almost belongs in a different category but I’m glad it’s In LW do more people read it.

I can’t wait to dig in and read this. It’ll take a couple of days to shoehorn it into my schedule. What a pleasant surprise to see a new story from Jezzaz.

Good story telling. Reminds me of Len Deighton.

Loved it! Makes me want to join the CIA and start boinking commie slut bitches worldwide.

Anyone who can read this to the end has more fortitude than I do. Mostly blather.

Welcome back, Jezzaz! I didn't get an emotional connection to the protagonist as he seemed rather detached from the situation. Compared to Out of Love, where it's an emotional roller coaster, this ones quite a bit more subdued, I thought. Another find story, nonetheless.

fantastic...like all your stories !

That was a really well told story with a really good plot. It's a shame that life between the two protagonists was neglected. Would have worked well in romance too.

A few other readers noted the emotional detachment. It fit the story perfectly. The story is told in the form of one long narrative flashback. The man lived three distinct periods in his life. First was the normal, emotionally filled life of an average man. The second was the traumatic destruction of everything of value in his life - love, marriage, family, freedom, health, identity. That trauma forced him emotionally disconnect himself. Otherwise the agony would have overwhelmed him. The third period, and the period from which he narrated his life, was the limping survival of that traumatized man. As he noted, he might have recovered if he had psychological help, but he was unable to unburden himself due to his continued traumatization by his government.

In other words, the tone of the story, and it's emotional emptiness, was exactly right for the character.

Well done.

Thank you. This was very well written. Mostly.

I didn't care for it. This is 3 stories all lumped together. And far too long.

He should have died on page 4.

She should have stayed away.

Darrell added nothing in his "aw shucks good buddy I am retired" soliloquy.

Susan would have been an interesting character to explore.

Hey, I thought Ian Fleming was dead ?.

Brilliant story, the story teller takes you along their dreams and nightmares, and this one was most enjoyable.

Clever. Thanks.

Great spy yarn and it surely fits Loving Wives. 5*

well written, but so very very sad.

Maybe a happy ending next time?

5* one hell of a return story. Enjoyed it, I sometimes felt ambivalent about the MC - but while he seemed a little milquetoast, what was he supposed to do? He confronted his wife (much to his detriment), if he made waves he would have really disappeared, he took his lumps and his rewards and moved on. Not sure there was anything else he could have reasonably done. I keep thinking you might go RAAC here - that would have been a disastrous stretch IMNSHO. -- kept waiting to find out Susan was NSA watching him, that would have been too cliche, thank you for not doing that!

Loved it, 5 Stars. Very well put together

Really loved the story.Everything,fit nicely.. Nothing drawn out or overstated, great action flow. I wish you could have a second chapter where he could have reconnected and had adventures

Fabulous story, and I couldn’t put it down. Totally agree with you about baseball, and of course the Arsenal are tops. 5 stars, no problem.

As usual

You interrupted my to-do list and inspired yet more envy of your talent. Thanks heaps.

I liked it enough for a 4, not enough for a 5. It was just too sad. Very sorry he never got to have children, or am I wrong? Susan is a few years older than him, and if I'm counting correctly, he was out of school a couple years when he met Clarissa, then 4 years of marriage, 2 years in the embassy, several years alone in America, hmmm...maybe not too late, after all. Doubt there'll be a sequel, so will never know. Damn, that jezzaz is good!

I had the fortitude to read this story to its conclusion and found it to be an interesting read. If I had gone through what the MC went through I believe I would would be a bit detached as well. 5*****

Excellent albeit melancholy story. Would love to see it on the screen. Well done.

This story just kept getting better... I think the connection with the M.C. was easy to make and yet hard to appreciate and so well told as to be personal and intimate. You did a great job of 'squaring it away' at the end and I felt the story had a very satisfying conclusion that was believable and fair to almost all of the characters.. I really enjoyed this story, Thank You it was a great piece of writing 5*****+

I found it very entertaining and gave it five stars. Of course, it was highly improbable, much like James Bond movies. But it was very well written and, as I said, quite a page turner.

Great story. Thanks!

James Bond would have been proud. An entertaining way to spend some time. Thanks for the effort.

Lost me on page 6.

LWlurker

A great tale, thank you. As a fan of Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy et alia another tale along this line will be appreciated,

Very good and miles ahead of dtiverson who could learn a lot from reading this. You are able to get across true emotion vs the redundant stories DT writes again and again and again.

Good story!! But you cannot travel anonymously around the USA and the 3 letter agencies would easily put together who was mailing the USB's these days. If this was twenty years ago it might have been possible without all of todays technology giving them the ability to track your every move through phones, cars and cameras

There was a 5 story here unfortunately it got added to 7 pages of needless fluff. Way to long and drawn out.

Well constructed and followed through. Reasonably well edited so no big "sillies" nor important loose ends. Thanks for posting it, I read it through in one sitting and enjoyed it.

PS I related to the Saudi Embassy bit. Visiting Saudi a number of years ago was an eye opener. You do not know what arrogance is till you meet a Saudi prince. You do not know what hypocrisy is till you move in those circles...

Getting into their Embassy would not be trivial though!

I thought this was very very good. Really gripping and affecting for the first seven or eight pages. I do think it lost a little bit of steam in the last two or three pages, almost like you just wanted to get to the end yourself. I agree with one of the other commenters that you could have fleshed out Susan and some of the other pieces of the ending a bit more. Thank you for writing this. It was quite entertaining.

The tone at the beginning -- that strongly voiced, colloquial, digressive tone -- led me to expect a light entertainment. Then the tale veered off into dark, disturbing waters. Quality storytelling.

Could have been a very interesting story; the first quarter of it had me intrigued. Regretfully, the story line unraveled after that quarter and it ended up as a whimper. Very sad.

Amazing how a wonderfully complicated tragedy with so many details can just come into your mind. Your writing as always is excellent. Thanks

OK - I give up. I’m halfway through page three of what I perceive as an overly long story. So far, it features a too chatty, conversational narrator repeatedly telling me they’re going to tell me something - eventually. These types of stories that constantly refer to the reader, ‘playing to the camera’ so to speak, seems to be common to many of the English, British or wherever, writers from the UK.

It’s annoying

More Davies than Davis.

Oh, yeah … 5*

WOW, just WOW, don't expect a story of this caliber on a FREE site.

Humbly thanking you for your efforts.

RSKY

Outstanding story! Very believable too.

A small thing ... "I looked at Ice Hockey, and that looked good, except there wasn't a local team to follow, at least nothing local in the NHL. So that left... the NFL or the NBA. There was the Philadelphia Eagles" ... well if he could ponder following Philly teams the NHL has a team there?

which had an extensive work load. TK U MLJ LV NV

Some people really enjoy depressing tales. Geez, the world is depressing enough. Maybe I see the whole world the wrong way, but when I come to read stories I come for escapism. This was a long slog and you are a good writer, but maybe just give the ending a little lighter touch, maybe make the whole journey worth it instead of coming away feeling down. Just a thought.

A really good plot but could seriously have been cut by a page or 5.

Far too many irrelevant tangents imo.

Still far superior to the vast majority of stories posted here so 5*

Welcome back!

I read the story in one breath.

Looking forward to conclusion to Ryan's tale

Best LW story in a long long time. Five stars.

Kept me interested all the way through, 5*

This is a good story and well told but as others have written, too wordy and with too many careless mistakes. Still, an original story of love and redemption, a rare gem. Five stars.

Not quite sure the purpose of the episode in which Darrell thanks Rich for his life. Too minor a character to spend that much time with him, especially since the info he reveals is duplicated by Risa later on.

Great story, thanks for sharing.

Helluva page turner. Thank you.

4 stars from me. While this tale was very well-written, I think it should have been in the "Non-Erotic" category instead of Loving Wives because I think there were maybe three references to sex and certainly nothing erotically written. Had I known there was there was nothing sexual in this tale, I probably would have skipped over it for the simple fact that I come onto this site to get hot, and there was nothing hot about this story. I would have also preferred for the husband to end back up with his spy-wife and living happily ever after, so the ending was too sad for my tastes.

Too long, too much grinding. 3*

This rating is a tough one. Is it another great literary work from a good author? Yes. Did it have complex and unique story arc? Yes. Did I get bored stiff half way though it? Oh, absolutely! I think I get your attempt at despair for Rich by dragging out the story, causing us despair if we would ever know his future, but it was overdone. As a total work, I'll begrudgingly give 5*, but need to up your craft and not try to fit a novel into a novella.

This was a great read. Thank you for your efforts.

Thanks jezz, enjoyed the read! Thanks!

Killian

That was quite a yarn. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Very well done. Ignore those with short attention spans. LW is sorely lacking in quality.

Great Story

I think it was a fantastic story, I could not put it down until it was finished. I have no issues with the length I feel it served to create the buildup to a great ending.

Just got lost in this one. Well told even though, yes it is a little long. Thank you!

A wonderful story, but the middle did not keep my attention as much as the beginning and ending. This is a quality story

Great story, your best so far and certainly the best read on LW for weeks! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Just a little nitpicking: Handing him the USB stick "Clarissa" told him that three false tries for the password would erase the files automatically. It seemed obvious that her real name was the key. But there are far more than three possibilities of a password created using her real name (miriamfinchley, Miriamfinchley, Miriam_Finchley, MFinchley, MiriamFinchley, etc.) How could she be sure that Rich would solve the riddle?

Excellent tale that. I thoroughly enjoyed this entertaining story..with the singular exception of Arsenal being mentioned...the length of this work was required to impart the full emotional impact although not always easy going. Thank you very much for this and a deserved 5*

Thanks Jezzaz, I enjoyed this story, didn't know which way it was going, surprised a few times, glad no vanilla sex was thrown in just so it could be erotic fiction. I enjoy a story of derring-do so was a little disappointed that we didn't find out what had caused the mob to return the bar to susie. More action n adventure. 5 stars m8.

She robbed him and his family of their future. She intended to never have kids with him and make him an evolutionary dead end. That was her biggest crime. I hope Luke and Sue at least adopt.

I really enjoyed the story, although the plot was hard to like. Your writing is so excellent, that I really enjoyed being lost in my head with your words. And I think that you are probably closer to the truth than any of us about the dealings of the intelligence services, and their dealings and thoughts about the 'common herd'. Perhaps that's why they tend to recruit from the true-blue universities, to get a jump on that kind of thinking.

On the downside, there was very little pleasure, joy or happiness in the tale, so it's definitely a downer. However, I write them that way sometimes as well, so I'm not complaining.

All-in-all a very well-told story of an unfortunate man, whose nature is used against him time and again, which certainly made me think hard.

Thank you, sir. 5*

Well written. Reminded me of stories by qhml1

Which is definitely a compliment

This is a great story, but really felt this should have ended as a reconciliation / got back together with her. Really sad story if that was your goal.

You rock!

5*

Well done.

Imaginative, well crafted, good character development coupled with a decent pace. Yes, some of the introspective parts seemed to drag but overall they worked with the story.

Great story from an awesome story teller. There is loneliness, love, betrayal, redemption, tears, laughs, suffering, surprises, despair, hope, lies, half-trues, past, present and future in the story. Don't believe me? There is everything and much more. So, you have to read it yourself and draw your own conclusions. Thanks for the story, the long effort, and your time. Please, keep writing

Very well written throughout. Long enough to have been divided into chapters submitted separately. But it kept my interest to the end. (I can’t resist a small correction. Galveston is on the Gulf of Mexico.) I will read your other works here; you are that good.

I first thought it was going to be a long growner, but it kept me going and I did very few fast-read/skim paragraphs. This one kept my attention and after what WDC deep-state intelligence did to Bush and Trump, very believable about petty agendas by high placed GS'ers and appointees. Even that last few 007 movies depicted corrupt inner workings of MI5 & MI6. Where there is smoke there is always some amount of fire/truth.

/

6*, Hooyah, Salutes...

Thanks for writing! You always keep me on the edge of my seat.

Good story - belongs in the spy short story category. Thanks

I think what I love about Jezzaz's stories is not the little trip down the yellow brick road of infidelity but the unique way the sins of the cheater are revealed. A Baseball jumbotron, a millionaires guilty manipulation of all the parties involved a "honey we have to talk" conversation with basically a technomage who destroys the evil parties with words alone (Well almost words alone) and here with some Mr. and Mrs. Smith level of intrigue but with the tragedy of A Boilerplate solution with the cheated upon tortured for 2 years. So yes great fun just to let the whole thing spool out, YMMV but still one of my favorites. Had the injured man been Ryan from Live from the game I would have had issues with that. :-) Thanks, still waiting for Ryans Hope.

A story certainly worth the wait. Thank you!

Very imaginative. Well edited, but very dry in parts. Definitely complex. I was mildly surprised that after she went through her story, he didn’t tell Clarissa that Darrell had visited, highlighting story conflicts.

All in all, she caused catastrophic damage to his life. Someone subject to 2 years confinement and torture, permanently disfigured, with some loss of mobility, dexterity, and disfigurement, would likely have major depressive issues. Suicide would not be shocking.

I bet this was a good story, for those you had the time and inclination. I had to skip to the last page after slogging through page 1, realizing that this was a pretty much the author staring at himself in the mirror. I read page 11 second, then page 10, and I knew pretty much the entire story that was worth the effort. All the extraneous obnoxious pointless details I skipped. What a rag. I think Ian Flemming is safe from your predation on his genre.

Thanks for making it easy to skip over the empty filler, and thanks for the effort. Really, I can't imagine.

Thank you jezzaz, loved it. 5 stars.

That was long, at times tedious, but very, very well done. So glad they didn’t end up together.

Excellent effort. Worth all 5 stars! Thanks for sharing.

Well done

I almost didn't read this as I only have so much time in the day for reading but I am glad I found the time! This author is a really good writer who probably should be writing novels. However, despite being excellent I agree with some others that this one is in the wrong category. Still a 5 star story. Looking forward to reading more of your stories.

Far too long for what it was.How did the Major know he would begin the diner at that time and also manage to get his family there,to what was a back of beyond area.

Your stuff is always good but this is superb. It's in the proper category, really the quintessence of what damage a 'Loving Wife' can cause. Thanks for sharing.

Wow! I really really liked this what else can I say