![]() ![]() From there, de Villiers’s incredible work rate took over, and by the time of his death, de Villiers had sold over 100 million copies and had written almost 200 spy novels. ![]() In fact, the inspiration behind de Villiers’s transition from journalism to fiction had to do with an editor’s not-so serious challenge in the wake of Fleming’s untimely demise: “You should take over.”Īpparently that was all it took. Beginning in 1965, de Villiers’s novels very quickly filled the gap left by the passing of Ian Fleming. Unstated in Worth’s piece is the fact that de Villiers, a bon vivant of the highest order, was also probably cherished by his contemporaries because he lived a life similar to Malko Linge, the Austrian aristocrat who freelances for the CIA in de Villiers’s long-running SAS (short for Son Altesse sérénissime, or “His Serene Highness”) series of novels. Worth wrote in his 2013 profile of de Villiers for the New York Times, despite being “despised by many on the French left for his right-wing political views,” de Villiers had become a sort of institution in his home country because of his seemingly unstoppable success. A lifelong Parisian, de Villiers was at the time eulogized for being one of the Francophone world’s most beloved spy fiction writers and the one popular novelist that French intellectuals actually read (although few would ever fess up to it). ![]() On Halloween of last year, Gérard de Villiers died at the age of 83. ![]()
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