Gérard de Villiers, 1929–2013

The spy novelist who spun tales from real sources

Gérard de Villiers was one of France’s most popular novelists, but his country’s leaders turned up their noses at his sex-packed spy tales—while secretly poring over their well-sourced details. “The French elite pretend not to read him,” said former Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine. “But they all do.”

De Villiers, the son of a notorious womanizer, was raised by his mother and two sisters, said Le Monde (France). As a foreign affairs reporter during the 1950s, he built up a source network among intelligence officials and diplomats. After Ian Fleming died in 1964, an editor friend urged him to “take over.” De Villiers took three characters he knew—a French intelligence official, a German baron, and an arms dealer—and by “knitting their DNA” together created Malko Linge, aka S.A.S., an Austrian aristocrat who spied for the CIA. “No one would have taken a Frenchman seriously,” he explained. “Besides cheese and wine, nothing about us is credible abroad.”

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