John Gardner

John Gardner linked two distinct crime series to different periods of twentieth-century history. The Nostradamus Traitor, published in 1979, introduces intelligence officer Herbie Kruger and reached the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger shortlist. The Streets of Town appeared in 2003 as the second Suzie Mountford novel after Bottled Spider, returning to a policewoman’s investigations in 1940s London. This British John Gardner, born in 1926, also wrote the Boysie Oakes novels and continued Ian Fleming’s James Bond series with authorization from the rights holders. His range moved from espionage and Cold War intrigue to historically grounded police fiction without merging the identities of the two recurring protagonists.