John Gardner

• Born: November 20, 1926
• Birthplace: Seaton Delaval, Northumberland, England
• Died: August 3, 2007
• Place of death: Basingstoke, England

Types of Plot: Comedy caper; espionage; master sleuth; police procedural

Principal Series: Boysie Oakes, 1964-1975; Derek Torry, 1969-1974; Professor Moriarty, 1974-1975; Herbie Kruger, 1979-1995; James Bond, 1981-1996; Sergeant Suzie Mountford, 2002-2005

Contribution

John Gardner specialized in taking over characters created by other writers. By presenting characters such as James Bond and Dr. Moriarty in his own way, Gardner added an extra dimension to his novels: The original characters remain in the reader’s mind, available for comparison with Gardner’s versions. Gardner also pioneered the practice of including comic elements in the standard mystery, effectively creating a new genre. His work shows great attention to historical detail and more than a touch of the occult. Gardner’s professionalism and ability to imitate other writers’ styles helped him, particularly in his James Bond novels. However, his own stylistic sense was better than that of Ian Fleming , so his stories read somewhat differently. Nevertheless, he retained Fleming’s readers and handed the series over to other writers after illness forced him to abandon it. His books have been translated into more than fourteen languages.

Biography

John Edmund Gardner (not to be confused with literary scholar John Champlin Gardner, Jr., 1933-1982) was born on November 20, 1926, in Seaton Delaval, Northumberland, England. He developed an interest in writing very early and at the age of nine told his father he wanted to be a writer. His progress toward that goal, however, was hardly direct. After wartime service in Britain’s Royal Navy in the latter part of World War II and as a commando with the marines in 1946, he graduated from St. John’s College, Cambridge University, in 1950. He decided to follow his father into the Anglican priesthood and was ordained in 1953. Meanwhile, in 1952, he married Margaret Mercer, with whom he had two children. Gardner developed doubts about whether he had followed the right calling and eventually left the priesthood in 1958. He then worked as a theater critic and art editor for a Stratford-on-Avon newspaper for six years.

Gardner came to realize that he wanted to write books of his own rather than to remain a critic. After writing a nonfictional work discussing his alcoholism, he became a mystery novelist. He won popularity immediately with his Boysie Oakes series, but his career did not really blossom until 1981, when he was selected to continue the James Bond series, more than fourteen years after Ian Fleming died. At first, he contracted to write three books to bring Bond into the late twentieth century. However, his contract was repeatedly renewed because of the success of his books. He himself said that Bond was too much of a fantasy character for his liking, but his professionalism carried him through sixteen Bond novels, some of which were novelizations of screenplays.

While writing the Bond novels, Gardner moved to the United States and then to Ireland. However, the onset of cancer in 1995 and the death of his wife in 1997 brought him back to Great Britain. After major surgery, he survived the cancer, and after a gap of some five years, resumed writing. He began a completely new series, set during World War II, with Suzie Mountford, a female police sergeant, as the series lead. He imagined her as a middle-class woman thrown into a world of crime and men by the demands of the war. The first novel of the series, Bottled Spider, was published in 2002. He continued to work hard until 2006, when a serious stroke stopped him from writing once again. He died on August 3, 2007, in Basingstoke, England.

Analysis

Although adept at creating original characters, John Gardner devoted much of his career to mysteries that developed the characters of other detective writers. Ian Fleming’s James Bond ranks foremost among those that Gardner used for his own purposes. Bond plays the principal role in two of Gardner’s series, the first using the name Boysie Oakes and the second explicitly continuing the original Bond novels. Another character Gardner adopted is Dr. Moriarty, the greatest antagonist of Sherlock Holmes. Not all Gardner’s work, however, was variations on themes by other writers. He also wrote a number of espionage novels—one trilogy in particular earned wide recognition because of its detailed picture of life in England during World War II.

Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels appealed to audiences in the 1950’s in part because of their ruthless but suave and sophisticated hero. Although Fleming took Bond very seriously, certain elements of his stories readily lent themselves to parody. Gardner made apt use of these elements in his Boysie Oakes series, beginning with The Liquidator (1964).

The Boysie Oakes Series

In his first Boysie Oakes novel, Gardner paints an easily recognizable character. Oakes, also known as “L,” works as a professional killer for the Department of Special Security. Unlike most members of his profession, he fears violence and hires others to do his killing for him. As if this were not enough, Oakes also cannot stand flying. In the Oakes series, which eventually numbered eight novels, the plot usually matches the principal character in absurdity. In Understrike (1965), Oakes—nervous, inept, and forgetful as always—goes on a mission to observe the test of a Russian submarine. The Russians quickly catch on and send a duplicate of Oakes, an agent of their own, to substitute for the real Oakes. As usual, Gardner’s hero somehow muddles through.

Many of the Oakes novels illustrate a feature that appears often in Gardner’s work. He depicts sexual scenes very graphically. In the Oakes novels, this subject becomes an occasion for humor: Oakes overcomes his habitual indolence for extended exercises in lechery, often with Miss Chicory Triplethrust.

A Complete State of Death

Readers who viewed Gardner as a skilled parodist and comic mystery writer soon learned that his talents extended far beyond this rather minor genre. In A Complete State of Death (1969), he introduced Inspector Derek Torry of Scotland Yard. Unlike Oakes, Torry is a very serious character. To him, crime stands as a personal enemy, and he is consumed by his hatred of it. Interrogations often end with Torry losing his temper and slugging his suspects. He does this not because he is cruel but because he becomes too involved. Torry, a conservative Roman Catholic, also finds himself troubled by religious doubts. Some people see in Torry a reflection of Gardner himself. Gardner, however, denied that Torry mirrored his own problems and viewed with hostility attempts to read his novels as autobiography.

Although Gardner intended A Complete State of Death and his other Torry novel, The Corner Men (1974), as comments on criminal violence and its malevolent effects, the author found his taste for the bizarrely humorous difficult to abandon. In the former novel, for example, the plot centers on a school for aspiring criminals run by a character whose manner resembles that of an English university teacher. The aristocratic head of the school is, for all of his apparent good breeding, an agent of the Crime Syndicate who operates with ruthless efficiency.

The Return of Moriarty

Gardner soon returned to novels featuring another writer’s character. In The Return of Moriarty (1974), Gardner began a popular series that features the main antagonist of Sherlock Holmes. According to Gardner’s series, Moriarty, like Holmes, survived their famous showdown at Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Moriarty, portrayed as a professor, has returned to London in an effort to control all crime in Europe.

Although the Moriarty novels do not boast the fine character portrayal of the Torry stories, they make evident another key feature of Gardner’s work: Gardner took great pains to depict accurately the background for his stories. He showed in his Moriarty series an impressive knowledge of Victorian England. He neglected almost nothing in his efforts toward realism: He knew Victorian criminal slang, for example, and informed the reader what diners in restaurants of the time were likely to order for dinner.

The Werewolf Trace

With The Werewolf Trace (1977), yet another one of Gardner’s interests came into full view. He had a detailed knowledge of World War II, dating back to his own service in the Royal Navy. The horrors of Nazism and the fears that Adolf Hitler aroused among the British people form the backdrop to this novel.

Its characteristically unusual plot concerns a nine-year-old boy who may be a survivor of the last hours of the Third Reich. If so, it is likely that the boy is being groomed for the role of Werewolf, the British code name for the future leader of any attempt to revive the Nazi empire. Although from this description one might suspect that a farce is in the offing, Gardner in fact intended his novel to make serious points. These concern the bad effects of technology, the evils that result from unmanageable obsessions, and the need for privacy. The Werewolf Trace also illustrates Gardner’s interest in the occult. The house in which the alleged future Führer lives has been visited by ghosts that have arisen from a mysterious killing of another little boy.

The Kruger Trilogy

Gardner’s occultism was not something that he placed in his stories to satisfy a whim. On the contrary, he artfully blended elements of the occult into his works to add to the feeling of mysterious terror. This use of the occult is a principal feature of The Nostradamus Traitor (1979) , the first volume of a trilogy whose main character is a German-born British intelligence officer named Herbie Kruger.

Here the occult lies at the center of the novel. As the title suggests, the prophecies of Nostradamus, a sixteenth century French astrologer, serve as the book’s leitmotif. They enabled Gardner to tie together events in Great Britain and France in 1940/1941 with later developments in London in the 1970’s. Although the connection between Nostradamus and the first Allied agent to penetrate German-occupied France might seem tenuous, in Gardner’s skilled hands astrology evoked the eerieness of the Third Reich, through the interest of Hitler and Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels in that subject.

Herbie Kruger, the agent featured in The Nostradamus Traitor, was one of Gardner’s favorite characters. Gardner carefully depicted his personality in The Garden of Weapons (1980), the second volume of the Kruger trilogy. Kruger is highly nervous, sexually impotent, and in his own eyes a failure. He comes out of his gloom only when listening to the music of his favorite composer, Gustav Mahler. In this novel, the plot, while skillfully woven, takes second billing to the depiction of Kruger. The story is about an espionage network set up in East Berlin that may have been infiltrated by a double agent. In the novel, Kruger recalls his troubled past as a child living in wartime Berlin.

The first two volumes of the trilogy, along with the final volume, The Quiet Dogs (1982), illustrate an aspect of Gardner’s work that became increasingly prominent. He offered a detailed picture of the way an espionage agency works. The interplay between the “masters,” the leaders of the intelligence agencies who manipulate men like chess pieces, and the agents, who carry out orders without knowing their real purposes, fascinated Gardner. One of his later novels, The Secret Generations (1985), made the mechanics of espionage its chief theme. This work traces a British and an American family, both of which have long-standing connections with the intelligence services of their country, through three generations of involvement in spying.

License Renewed

Gardner did not become a real star among mystery writers until License Renewed (1981). He had been selected by Gildrose Publications, which held the copyright to the James Bond novels, to continue Ian Fleming’s immensely popular series, and this was his first Bond novel. Gardner’s novels in the Bond series won for him a wide audience and celebrity status. His James Bond differs from Fleming’s: Even though he was hired to continue the series, he produced no slavish imitation of the original 007. The new Bond is conscious of Earth’s limited resources and carefully avoids using too much gasoline. Also, although Gardner was not writing a parody of Bond, a few Boysie Oakes details appear from time to time. In License Renewed, a thirty-foot-long python removes the shoes of its victims before eating them, and the story’s villains plan to seize an American defense command station by using ice cream to flood the soldiers guarding it.

Many critics did not like the new Bond; although Gardner had generally received good reviews from critics during his career, the Bond novels were an exception. Most of Gardner’s critics contended that he had failed to capture the spirit of the true Bond. They found his style too arch and sophisticated, unsuited to the simplicity of Ian Fleming’s original. When Gardner attempted to imitate Fleming’s style, to some reviewers the result was awkward prose.

This criticism is somewhat surprising. Although Gardner had not concentrated on his style before the Bond series, it had almost always been considered accomplished and engaging. He had shown remarkable skill in the evocation of historical events, and his plotting was highly intricate. If, in the light of his previous success, the criticism of the Bond series surprised Gardner, it is unlikely that it disturbed him very much. Some critics did like the Bond books, and numerous readers did also. Without a doubt, the Bond series brought Gardner much commercial success.

Troubled Midnight

Troubled Midnight (2005), the fourth novel of the Suzie Mountford series, is set, as are all the books in the series, in wartime Great Britain. Shortly before Christmas, 1943, two badly battered bodies are found in a quiet town in southern England. Suzie is assigned the case under Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Livermore, who is her secret lover. They are joined by an operative from Intelligence, because one of the victims has details of the forthcoming Normandy landings. Gardner thus combines police work with the kind of undercover plot with which he is most at home.

Principal Series Characters:

• Boysie Oakes , a parody of Ian Fleming’s James Bond, is a lazy and lecherous espionage agent who hires others to do his killing for him. He is inept, forgetful, and afraid of airplanes.
• Derek Torry , a Scotland Yard inspector of Italian descent, takes crime personally and reacts angrily to criminals. He suffers from religious crises of conscience. His conservative Roman Catholic beliefs often inhibit his efforts at romance and make him self-doubtful.
• Professor Moriarty , created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is a leading antagonist of Sherlock Holmes who has the personality of an English university teacher. His efforts to bring all major European crime under control rarely result in confrontation with Holmes.
• Herbie Kruger , a German-born British intelligence agent, considers himself a failure. He is devoted to Gustav Mahler’s music and, like many Gardner characters, is thoroughly neurotic.
• James Bond , the famous Agent 007 created by Ian Fleming, has been revived by Gardner. The new Bond differs from the original in being interested in conservation. He is also more sophisticated and faces villains who are often not mere stock figures of evil.
• Suzie Mountford is a female detective who operates during World War II and has to fight her way through male chauvinism in the police force as well as to sort out the mysteries of the working class.

Bibliography

Broyard, Anatole. “James Bond Revised.” Review of Icebreaker, by John Gardner. New York Times, April 9, 1983, p. 1.17. Negative review of Gardner’s continuation of the Bond series. Finds Gardner’s prose awkward when compared with Fleming’s smooth style.

Bryant, Bobby. “James Bond 00-50: After Half a Century, Novels Are at a Crossroads.” Times Union, September 14, 2003, p. J4. This discussion of the James Bond novels after Ian Fleming’s death notes that the series was continued first by Kingsley Amis, then Gardner, and finally Raymond Benson (1997-2002). Gardner states that he feels the series should no longer be continued.

Hitz, Frederick P. The Great Game: The Myth and Reality of Espionage. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. This work contrasts fictional espionage with that in the real world. Although it does not discuss Gardner’s work, it does discuss some of Fleming’s and sheds light on Gardner’s Bond novels.

Melton, Emily. Review of Bottled Spider, by John Gardner. Booklist 99, no. 2 (September 15, 2002): 209. Reviewer finds the first book in the Suzie Mountford series, which is about a serial killer, to be suspenseful and well paced and to provide a good sense of London in World War II.

Wright, David. Review of Troubled Midnight, by John Gardner. Booklist 102, no. 12 (February 15, 2006): 50. Review of the fourth entry in the Suzie Mountford series about the murders of an air-force colonel and his lover finds the work filled with period details. Compares the work to that of Helen MacInnes.