James Bond in License Renewed

British spy novelist Gardner began his career with 'The Liquidator', in which he created a richly comic character named Boysie Oakes who inadvertently is mistaken to be a tough, pitiless man of action and is thereupon recruited into a British spy agency. Oakes is, in actuality, a devout coward with many other character failings who wants nothing more than to be left alone and is terrified by the situations into which he is constantly being forced. The book appeared at the height of the fictional spy mania and as a send-up of the whole business was an immediate success. It was made into a movie, and another seven light-hearted novels about the cowardly Oakes appeared over the next 12 years. In 1981, Gardner was asked to revive the James Bond series of novels. Between 1981 and 1996, Gardner wrote sixteen James Bond novels. While the books were commercial successes, Gardner was ambivalent about writing novels with a character he hadn't created. .