John Gardner Books in Order

Boysie Oakes is mistaken for a fearless wartime killer and recruited as a government assassin. Since he is actually a coward, he hires someone else to do the killing, until the scheme turns dangerous.

Boysie Oakes goes to America as an observer for a missile test and stumbles into Operation Understrike. Doubles, Cold War bluffing, and a terrifying weapon leave him badly out of his depth.

Boysie Oakes travels to Lake Maggiore to kill a parliament member, only to find the target already dead. A finishing school, Doctor Thirel, and the secret Amber Nine operation complicate everything.

Boysie Oakes is sent over the Berlin Wall for an assassination he would rather avoid. With Soviet and Chinese interests circling the same target, his usual panic becomes a survival tool.

This collection gathers Gardner’s shorter suspense work, including Boysie Oakes stories. The pieces show his taste for spy games, comic danger, and sudden reversals in compact form.

Detective Inspector Derek Torry faces a sophisticated criminal organization, including a school for aspiring criminals. The case tests his temper, faith, and fierce hatred of organized violence.

Boysie Oakes joins Mostyn and Charlie Griffin in a private security venture, then heads to America. A missing rocket, Wizard Island, and a new set of villains make retirement impossible.

A struggling spy novelist is sent to interview a notorious defector, and Boysie Oakes is soon tangled in the mission. Russia, circus disguises, and Cold War confusion follow.

American novelist David Askelon arrives in London after writing a huge bestseller about youth culture. Gardner uses the setup for a sharp story about publishing, censorship, permissiveness, and public panic.

This alternate-title Boysie Oakes adventure sends the cowardly agent into the airline business. A budget carrier should be simple, but hijinks, spies, and danger quickly take over.

Douglas Silver takes charge of the tired Shireston Festival and tries to remake it through bold Shakespeare productions. Backstage egos, desire, and professional rivalry drive this theatre-world novel.

At Mostyn’s urging, Boysie Oakes starts a low-cost airline, complete with glamorous hostesses and terrible timing. The business soon becomes cover for another round of spy chaos.

A reworking of Gardner’s theatre novel, this follows Douglas Silver as he revitalizes the Shireston Festival. Casting choices, personal entanglements, and Shakespearean ambition make opening night anything but smooth.

This Gardner collection includes Boysie Oakes stories and other sharp-edged espionage pieces. Assassination plots, professional paranoia, and dark comedy sit side by side.

Moriarty survives Reichenbach and plans to expand into America, only to learn that London rivals have seized his empire. The professor returns to reclaim his criminal throne.

Boysie Oakes is dragged back into anti-terror work and quickly finds himself framed. Chased by police, security services, and old enemies, the reluctant assassin has to stay alive long enough to understand the setup.

Moriarty works to bring rival international criminals back under control while Holmes remains a threat. Gardner turns the professor’s revenge into an underworld power struggle with disguises, plots, and old scores.

Derek Torry returns to confront organized violence and the men who keep it running from the edges. Gardner’s police thriller follows crime as a system, not just a single act.

In this standalone suspense novel, Gardner drops ordinary people into the machinery of danger, pursuit, and hidden motive. The title says it plainly: survival depends on reacting before the trap closes.

Gardner blends espionage, old wartime guilt, and a widening conspiracy in this standalone thriller. A hidden trail points toward buried identities and danger that has waited years to surface.

A World War II bomber is found in Romney Marsh, but records say it never vanished, and the identified crewmen are alive. Wing Commander David Dobson uncovers a mystery with deadly wartime roots.

Herbie Kruger’s first case begins when a woman asks about her husband, executed as a wartime spy. The question opens onto former Nazis, Soviet penetration, and a dangerous old network.

In this near-future thriller, Soviet power has overrun much of Western Europe, including Britain. Reactivated moles and nuclear blackmail drive a dark, apocalyptic story of occupation and resistance.

This alternate-title edition of Golgotha imagines a Soviet-dominated Western Europe and a desperate blackmail plot. Gardner mixes spy craft, political nightmare, and end-times imagery.

Gardner’s first Bond novel updates 007 for the 1980s. Bond infiltrates the circle of nuclear physicist Anton Murik, whose terrorist plan threatens power plants around the world.

Herbie Kruger moves through a world of false fronts, old networks, and Cold War debts. The case tests his instincts in the gray space between British intelligence and buried German history.

Bond teams with Cedar Leiter to investigate Markus Bismaquer, an ice-cream magnate suspected of reviving SPECTRE. The mission leads from Texas to a scheme aimed at NORAD.

Bond joins an uneasy team of CIA, KGB, and Mossad agents against a neo-Nazi terrorist network. In the Arctic cold, every alliance is useful, and none is safe.

American writer John Gardner reflects on the temperament, discipline, fears, and practical life of the novelist. It is less a formula book than a candid guide to becoming the kind of person who writes.

Bond appears to leave the Service in disgrace, making himself bait for SPECTRE. His target is a computer-game entrepreneur whose simulations conceal a plot against the superpowers.

The Railton family saga begins with espionage as family inheritance. Gardner follows the making of a secret-service dynasty, where patriotism, ambition, and private betrayal are impossible to separate.

Tamil Rahani, the dying head of SPECTRE, puts a price on Bond’s head. As assassins close in across Europe and Florida, Bond’s housekeeper May and Miss Moneypenny are drawn into danger.

Years after a failed East German operation, surviving agents from a honey-trap mission are being murdered. Bond is sent to find who is cleaning up the past, and why.

The Railton family’s intelligence legacy deepens as hidden houses, old files, and private rivalries expose the cost of living inside the secret world. Espionage becomes an inheritance.

A death in London leads Bond to The Meek Ones, a cult run by the mysterious Father Valentine. Behind the sermons is arms dealer Vladimir Scorpius and a plan built on fanaticism.

Herbie Kruger returns to the dangerous aftermath of old operations and buried Cold War betrayals. What looks like history is still active, and Herbie must sort loyalty from deception.

Gardner novelizes the film in which Bond goes rogue after drug lord Franz Sanchez destroys Felix Leiter’s life. Stripped of official backing, 007 infiltrates Sanchez’s empire from the inside.

The Railton espionage saga widens into family conflict, inherited secrets, and late Cold War danger. Gardner tracks how old intelligence work continues to shape the next generation.

Bond is assigned to protect a secret aircraft-carrier summit involving world leaders. A terrorist group called BAST plans to infiltrate the operation, turning a naval exercise into a hostage crisis.

Bond investigates Lee Fu-Chu, known as Brokenclaw, a San Francisco crime lord tied to stolen submarine technology. The case grows into a plan to crash the dollar and shake the world economy.

An elderly American is kidnapped by Russian extremists who believe he is a war criminal. Bond works with Soviet and Israeli contacts as the case turns into a political trap.

Gardner returns to family, faith, and espionage in a thriller where old loyalties keep shaping new dangers. Private history and public secrets collide as the past refuses to stay buried.

After the Cold War, members of a secret intelligence network called Cabal are being hunted. Bond and CIA agent Easy St John follow the killings toward a plot tied to the new Channel Tunnel.

Herbie Kruger investigates a famous orchestra conductor suspected of wartime collaboration. When assassins enter the picture, spy craft and music-world elegance give way to old violence.

Bond and Swiss investigator Flicka von Grüsse probe a string of murders marked by strange roses. The trail leads to retired actor David Dragonpol and a theatrical secret with deadly consequences.

This posthumous collection by the American John Gardner gathers essays and reviews on fiction, craft, and major modern writers. It is sharp, opinionated, and useful for readers interested in how novels work.

Bond and Flicka von Grüsse pursue Sir Maxwell Tarn, a billionaire arms dealer with grandiose fascist fantasies. The trail runs through Europe, Israel, and the Caribbean as Tarn’s SeaFire plan takes shape.

Big Herbie Kruger is drawn out of retirement after the death of Gus Keene, a legendary British interrogator. The deeper Herbie digs, the more he sees that his old friend mastered concealment too.

Gardner adapts the Bond film, sending 007 after the Janus crime syndicate and the stolen GoldenEye satellite weapon. The case becomes personal when Bond finds a former ally behind the threat.

In Gardner’s final Bond novel, 007 follows a lethal trail toward COLD, a fanatical group called Children of the Last Days. The mission links personal danger, old enemies, and global threat.

Retired lawyer Charlie Gauntlet worries as his new wife, an anti-terrorism detective, hunts an assassin called Alchemist. His own trip to a remote monastery uncovers secrets that may be just as dangerous.

During the Blitz, young policewoman Suzie Mountford is promoted into CID and handed a terrifying serial murder case. Bombs fall, male colleagues doubt her, and the killer keeps moving.

London is still at war in 1941, and Suzie Mountford is back on a dangerous West End patch. Gangland pressure, police resentment, and a brutal new investigation test her nerve.

In 1942, American forces are changing the rhythm of wartime England. When a barrister and his family are murdered, Suzie Mountford and Tommy Livermore follow the trail to a Norfolk village and nearby airfields.

Ten days before Christmas 1943, two battered bodies are found near Wantage. With Overlord secrets possibly at risk, Suzie Mountford and Tommy Livermore are pulled into a case where murder and espionage overlap.

In June 1944, a V-1 bomb destroys a Camberwell convent, but Suzie Mountford and Tommy Livermore find murder hidden among the dead. The case points to a larger wartime conspiracy.

In Gardner’s posthumous Moriarty finale, the Napoleon of Crime must pull a damaged empire back together. Rivals, defectors, and a traitor inside his own ranks threaten the control he has spent a lifetime building.