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...
(This entire section contains 1737 words.)
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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.