John Gardner

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BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR


Title: Confessor: Description:
An international thriller featuring intelligence chief Big Herbie Kruger. His friend and colleague Gus Keene, the best interrogator in the business but a man of mystery, has been murdered by a terrorist bomb. Kruger is summoned, from self-inflicted retirement, to investigate

Title: James Bond In John Gardner's Scorpius (james Bond): Description:
The dead body of a young girl found floating in the Thames leads Bond into the haunts of a secret sect which is connected with Scorpius, the biggest arms dealer to terrorists worldwide; Bond soon finds himself in the middle of a deadly game of terrorism and arms supplies. John Gardner is author of six previous James Bond titles, including "Ice Breaker", "Licence Renewed" and "Nobody Lives For Ever", as well as other thrillers such as "The Nostrodamus Traitor", "The Garden of Weapons" and "The Quiet Dogs".

Title: License Renewed: Description:
James Bond is back

Title: For Special Services (coronet Books): Description:
John Gardner's full-length 1980s Bond story. London: Coronet, 1982. Second Bond adventure by John Gardner. ‘James Bond Is Back: with a new pair of Sykes-Fairbairn commando daggers inside his shirt ... and the turbo-charged silver Saab 900 ready... With a new woman, even more desirable than Pussy Galore or Lavender ;peacock in his arms ... and the arch-enemy Blofeld and Spectre back on his hands ... The master spt, the ultimate hero is once again ready to serve Her Majesty ...and thrill his millions of readers with an all-new, brilliant novel of suspense.’

Title: Brokenclaw (coronet Books): Description:
A James Bond adventure by John Gardner.

Title: Licence Renewed (coronet Books): Description:
London: Coronet, 1982. 1980s Bond adventure. ‘After fifteen years, Ian Fleming’s master spy returns in a masterful new novel by John Gardner...Gardner gives us the Bond we all want – the only man who can save mankind from utter destruction, when nuclear plants all over the world are suddenly held for ransom. Full of gadgets and girls, glamour and charm, here is a novel as fresh and delightful as any to top the bestseller lists in many a year.’ John Gardner, Licence Renewed, London: Coronet, 1982. 1980s Bond adventure. ‘After fifteen years, Ian Fleming’s master spy returns in a masterful new novel by John Gardner...Gardner gives us the Bond we all want – the only man who can save mankind from utter destruction, when nuclear plants all over the world are suddenly held for ransom. Full of gadgets and girls, glamour and charm, here is a novel as fresh and delightful as any to top the bestseller lists in many a year.’

Title: The Secret Generations: Description:
Gardner surrenders his license for James Bond-ing to package a multi-generational saga about the Railtons, a spy family synonymous with British Intelligence and Security, whose undercover exploits herein stretch from 1909 to 1935 and who dash wonderfully about most of the civilised world. When General Sir William Arthur Railton VC KCB DSO, who made reconnaissance, fought and was wounded at the battle of Balaclava, dies in 1909, he leaves his inheritance to his son John rather than to his brother Giles, the family's wiliest and very deserving eldest member. Resolutely, Giles sets out like a Grand Master to navigate the family through this crisis. First off, Giles engineers John's younger brother Charles' befuddled transfer from the Diplomatic Service to Military Operations 5 (MO5), the newly born British Intelligence, staffed so far by only one officer and his clerk. This is the organisation meant to weld Britain's espionage activities into one formidable force. But already the Fenians are penetrating the Railton family through Malcolm Railton's wife Bridget, from Dublin, while Gustav Steinhauer, new head of the Kaiser's vast spy system, is set on fulfilling Wilhelm's vision of the German Imperial Navy--and not Britannia--as master of the great oceans. All of the Railtons, of whom there are many, sooner or later wind up in Intelligence of one sort or another, even the wives, though Giles' family does not know of his full involvement in the purchase of British shares in the new Suez Canal, his dark works in India and Egypt, his secret sessions with the new revolutionaries Lenin and Trotsky. And yet it is Giles, who in the evening of his life, embraces a foreign ideology--has a personal Road-to-Damascus revelation about the power and wealth he was born into--and becomes through horrific betrayal ""the first of the really great modern traitors."" This is Gardner at his best. Here his quick brilliance at characterisation and incredible density of anecdote and plot are far superior in tale-spinning ‚lan to his strong start then fading interest in three appearances as Ian Fleming's glamorous ghost. The Railtons are his chef-d'oeuvre in the arts of melodrama, delicious in their adaptability to the varied countries they pass through, marvellously Byzantine as they begin spying on each other as well as on their enemies. A dynasty this strongly established is sure to return.

Title: Freddy's Book (abacus Books): Description:
event in Freddy's Book (King Gustav and the Devil) is drawn from a tale in Mark Helprin's collection, A Dove of the East and Other Stories,"" explains the prefatory note. And ""numerous passages here are drawn, slightly altered, from other sources."" Well, what's here may not be original, yet it is nonetheless, for all the expropriating, very much Gardner--disingenuous, didactic, well-worded but flat. A specialist in psycho-history named Winesap comes to lecture at the university in Madison, Wisconsin, and while there is apprehended and invited to dinner by a spooky old Scandinavianist, Professor Agaard, who wants Winesap to meet his son Freddy--who, Agaard calmly says, is ""a monster."" And so Freddy is, as Winesap discovers when, on a snowy night, he makes it to the house to meet him: twelve years old, ""big as a rhinoceros, a small elephant"" with eyes ""red-rimmed, huge behind gold-rimmed glasses. . . childish pink lips"" (a wonderful description and perhaps a Gardner self-portrait). Freddy lives pent up in a too-small room, reading books, writing them too, and Winesap (along with the hapless reader) gets to sample one of these Freddy-authored books: ""King Gustav and the Devil,"" a heavy-going allegory about Lars-Goren Bergquist, an eight-foot-tall knight in 16th-century Sweden, who helps his cousin Gustav Vasa to assume the throne and then goes out on quest to destroy the Devil. The St. George-and-the-Dragon motif here is not hidden, and the road is bricked with all of Gardner's by now familiar pet peeves: organised religion, writers like William Gass (""He concentrated on the idea of Bishop Brask, cut off from heaven by boredom and despair, a man who no longer had feeling for anything except, perhaps, style""), philosophical relativism, and literature's city slickers: ""Great cities rise, artists grow wealthy, their vision grows confused and complex.