I just heard that best-selling spy novelist John Gardner
passed away on 7 August.
Best-known as the most prolific of the writers contracted to
continue the adventures of James Bond after the death of Ian
Fleming, Gardner, a former Anglican clergyman and recovering
alcoholic, would eventually write 16 Bond novels, more than
Fleming wrote himself, between 1981 and 1996.
Ironically, Gardner broke into spy fiction with a series
about Boysie Oakes, a cowardly, selfish, and not particularly
patriotic character who's dragooned into spy work pretty much
against his will. Oakes was created to be more or less the
antithesis of Bond, yet Oakes was an integral part of the
resume that got Gardner the Bond gig.
Though his Bond novels are probably his best-known and most
popular work, his reputation as a top-flight cloak-and-dagger
writer would be secure if he'd never written a single word
about 007. Two series in particular stand as his best work in
the sub-genre.
His five novels featuring Herbie Kruger, a naturalized Brit
of German birth who, after emigrating, has become the top
agent of MI-6 are among the best series of British spy novels
in the post-Le Carre era. Kruger debuted in THE NOSTRADAMUS
TRATIOR. The penultimate novel in the Kruger series, MAESTRO,
was reportedly Gardner's personal favorite of all his
books.
Kruger also makes a few cameo appearances in Gardner's
"Secret" trilogy, featuring the British Railtons and the
American Farthings, two families, related by marriage, who
defend freedom by choosing careers in their respective
countries' intelligence services. The trilogy effectively
combined the multi-generational family saga, historical
fiction, and espionage in an ambitious project that
attempted, largely successfully, to show, in a fictional
context, the history of the espionage profession from just
before WW1 to the early '60's. The three books in the trilogy
are THE SECRET GENERATIONS, THE SECRET HOUSES, and THE SECRET
FAMILIES.
Between 1995 and 2001, Gardner abruptly stopped writing while
he simultaneously fought cancer and the grief caused by his
wife's death. Winning his battle with the disease and coming
to terms with the death of his spouse, he returned to writing
with a vengeance, turning out a top-notch international
thriller, DAY OF ABSOLUTION, and starting a new historical
police procedural series about Suzie Mountford, a London
policewoman fighting crime in the years leading up to WW2.
The latest Mountford novel, NO HUMAN ENEMIES, will appear in
bookstories later this month.
He'll be missed.
JIM DOHERTY
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