John Gardner is one of the world's premier thriller writers, and has published more than forty novels, many of which have been bestsellers. Among Gardner's works are sixteen books in the legendary James Bond series, including Win, Lose, or Die and Never Send Flowers; he has also written six books featuring Big Herbie Kruger, most recently Confessor and Maestro, which was a New York Times Book of the Year. A graduate of Cambridge University who did his postgraduate work at Oxford, he has variously been a stage magician, an officer in the Royal Marines, a theatrical journalist, a lecturer in Shakespearean production and a priest in the Church of England.