New reissues of James Bond novels by John Gardner ....

Readers of this blog and Len Deighton's work are often also readers of other spy fiction - in particular the James Bond series. The name of John Gardner should be familiar to them.

Following Ian Fleming's death, his estate permitted the writing of books using the James Bond character by other writers. Famous amongst these was Gardner, and I've been alerted to an internet presence for this author online. Gardner, a successful author of over fifty books, is highly regarded by Bond readers as one of the authentic inheritors of the Fleming mantle, with such stories as Nobody Likes Forever and Win, Lose or Die. He was also a good friend of Len Deighton.

To quote from the biography on the website:

"In the early ’60s he wrote a series of highly acclaimed comic novels featuring a cowardly secret agent called Boysie Oakes, before moving on to more serious books: particularly those featuring Big Herbie Kruger - an outstanding fictional character of the Cold War. In the early eighties however he was invited by Ian Fleming’s literary copyright holders to write a series of continuation James Bond novels which proved to be so successful, world wide, that instead of the contracted three books he went on to publish some fourteen titles, plus two from screenplays.

In all, Gardner had fifty-three novels to his credit – many of them best-sellers and Maestro was notably a New York Times Book of the Year. Day of Absolution published in 2001 was his first book for six years, following a serious battle with cancer. He followed this with a new character that appeared with the publication of Bottled Spider in the Spring of 2001 – Suzie Mountford a Woman Detective Sergeant working in London during World War II. A further four Mountford books were to follow and a sixth was planned. Just before his death in 2007, Gardner finally completed the long awaited third novel in his Moriarty trilogy."

His son has got in touch with The Deighton Dossier to point out that new editions of his father's works have recently been published by Orion, with new cover jackets. Find out more on the John Gardner website. I've added the website to the list of useful links and would encourage Deighton Dossier reader to click on the link and check out this excellent, well-designed site.