Murder For Love

john gardner

Sometimes the price of fame and fortune is high. John Gardner, one of the handful of espionage writers whose best work will endure (I still think his Garden of Weapons is the greatest spy novel I've read), never quite attained the popular and critical recognition of such contemporaries as John le Carre, Len Deighton, Ken Follett, and Frederick Forsyth. Then, several years after the death of Ian Fleming, he agreed to continue the James Bond series.

Naturally, those books immediately shot to the bestseller lists, giving him the rewards of vast popularity. Equally predictably, critics blasted him for turning his back on his more serious work, saying the Bond books didn't have the depth and power of his other novels-the same ones they'd ignored in the past. Recently, he has produced novels that rank with his best work, notably Maestro, which brought Herbie Kruger back to work, and Confessor.

Gardner wrote (not in this story) that "sex is the glue that holds love together. " That may well be the unifying theme of all his best work, which has as much to do with human relations as it does with international skulduggery.

– O. P.