Nostradamus
First sentence
For anyone with the tendency to let the mind wander across centuries, even millennia, Nostradamus' corner of the Rhone delta in sunlit southern Provence was a singularly appropriate place to be born...
Description
John Edmund Gardner (20 November 1926 – 3 August 2007) was an English writer of spy and thriller novels. He is best known for his James Bond continuation novels, but also wrote a series of Boysie Oakes books and three novels containing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional villain, Professor Moriarty. During the Second World War, Gardner joined the Home Guard at the age of 13, served in the Fleet Air Arm and subsequently joined the Royal Marines: he later described himself as "the worst commando in the world". After demobilisation, he followed his father into the Church of England, studying theology at St John's College, Cambridge, and being ordained as a priest in 1953. After losing his faith, he left the church in 1958 and took a job as a drama critic at the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald.