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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". 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 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". 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.

Early life

John Edmund Gardner was born on 20 November 1926 in Seaton Delaval, a village in Northumberland. His parents were Cyril Gardner, a London-born Anglican priest who had been ordained in Wallsend in 1921, and Lena Henderson, a local girl; the couple were married in 1925. In 1933 the family moved to the market town of Wantage in what was then Berkshire, where Cyril took up the position of Chaplain at St Mary's, Wantage, and Gardner was educated at the local King Alfred's School.

During the Second World War he joined the Home Guard, despite being only 13 at the time. Gardner subsequently served in the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm, before transferring to 42 Commando, Royal Marines, for service in the Middle and Far East. Gardner considered himself "the worst commando in the world" and, despite being "a small-arms expert ... [who] also knew a lot about explosives", he admitted that "I bent an aeroplane I was learning to fly".

After the war he went up to St John's College, Cambridge, to study theology and was subsequently ordained as an Anglican priest in 1953. He realised that he had lost his faith and made an error in his career; he later admitted that during one sermon, "I didn't believe a word I was saying". He was released from the church in 1958 and took up a position as a drama critic with the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald. It was whilst at the Herald—aged 33—that Gardner realised he was an alcoholic, drinking two bottles of gin a day. He overcame his addiction and produced his first book as part of his therapy: the autobiographical Spin the Bottle, published in 1964. Critic and scholar John Sutherland says that of all the books Gardner published, it is "the one that most deserves to survive."

Writing career

In 1964 Gardner began his novelist career with The Liquidator, in which he created the character Boysie Oakes who inadvertently is mistaken to be a tough, pitiless man of action and is thereupon recruited into a British spy agency. In fact, Oakes was a devout coward who was terrified of violence, suffered from airsickness and was afraid of heights and Gardner admitted of him that, "though I have denied it many times—he was of course a complete piss-take of J. Bond". The book appeared at the height of the fictional spy mania and, as a send-up of the whole business, was an immediate success. Reviewing the novel in The New York Times, Anthony Boucher wrote, "Mr. Gardner succeeds in having it both ways: He has written a clever parody which is also a genuinely satisfactory thriller." The book was made into a film of the same name by MGM and another seven light-hearted novels and four short stories about the cowardly Oakes appeared over the next eleven years.

Following the success of his Oakes books, Gardner created new characters: Derek Torry—a Scotland Yard inspector of Italian descent—and Herbie Kruger, the latter of which appeared in a series of novels published simultaneously with his Bond works. In the mid-1970s Gardner also wrote the first of three novels using the character of Professor Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes series, the last of which was published posthumously. The third of this series, titled simply Moriarty, was delayed due to a dispute with the publisher, but was finally released shortly after his death. Erik Lee Preminger bought the film rights to the first of the trilogy—The Return of Moriarty—and wrote a script. Edgar Bronfman Jr., for Sagittarius Entertainment and Nat Cohen, for EMI Productions were to produce. Donald Sutherland was to portray Moriarty. Funding however fell through shortly before filming was to begin.