John Gardner | |
|---|---|
&sq=&lang=&file=File:John_Gardner.jpg) John Gardner, c. 1984 | |
| Born | 20 November 1926 Seaton Delaval, Northumberland, England |
| Died | 3 August 2007 (aged 80) Basingstoke, Hampshire, England |
| Occupation | Author |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | St John's College, Cambridge |
| Period | 1964–2007 |
| Genre | Spy fiction, crime fiction |
| Notable works | Boysie Oakes novels; continuation James Bond novels |
| Spouse |
Margaret Mercer
(m. 1952; died 1997) |
John Edmund Gardner (20 November 1926 – 3 August 2007) was an English writer of spy and thriller novels. He is best known for his James Bond continuation novels, but also wrote a series of Boysie Oakes books and three novels containing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional villain, Professor Moriarty.
During the Second World War, Gardner joined the Home Guard at the age of 13, served in the Fleet Air Arm and subsequently joined the Royal Marines: he later described himself as "the worst commando in the world".[1] After demobilisation, he followed his father into the Church of England, studying theology at St John's College, Cambridge, and being ordained as a priest in 1953. After losing his faith, he left the church in 1958 and took a job as a drama critic at the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald.
Gardner's literary career began in 1964 with the autobiographical Spin the Bottle, which detailed his experience of alcoholism. In the same year, he published The Liquidator, a parody of James Bond in which the cowardly Boysie Oakes is mistakenly recruited as a British spy. The book was made into a film, and followed by and seven further Oakes novels and four short stories over the next eleven years. He subsequently wrote further novels centred on the characters of Derek Torry and Herbie Kruger, a Scotland Yard inspector and an intelligence agent respectively. From the mid 1970s onwards, he published three novels using the character of Professor Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes series.
Between 1981 and 1996, Gardner wrote fourteen James Bond novels and the novelisations of two Bond films, at the invitation of Ian Fleming's former production company, Glidrose Publications. Although commercially popular, his Bond novels were not a critical success: The Guardian considered them "dogged by silliness".[2] He ended his work on Bond following a diagnosis of oesophageal cancer in the 1990s, and took a break from writing altogether in 1997, following the unexpected death of his wife, Margaret Mercer. In 2000, he resumed his literary work, publishing Day of Absolution in 2001 and Bottled Spider in 2002. The latter work introduced Detective Sergeant Suzie Mountford, named after Gardner's ex-fiancée, Patricia Mountford, who resumed her engagement with him after reading the book. He published a further four Suzie Mountford novels before his death in 2007, from suspected heart failure.