The books may be pure escapism, but they seem to be a trifle more true to life than Fleming. On a couple of occasions, actual events were closely prefigured in his novels, such as the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat.
Many actual events occurred in fictional guise in his novels, and his high-powered friends were often delighted to see themselves appear in his pages under different names. De Villiers himself called his novels, of which he wrote two hundred (!), “fairy tales for adults,” but they apparently had a second distinguishing feature-they frequently displayed an uncanny knowledge of actual high-stakes geopolitical affairs. He invented a hero who, just as James Bond goes by his official designation 007, is identified primarily by the sobriquet Son Altesse Sérénissime (His Serene Highness), or SAS. According to the New York Times obit, de Villiers was something like the Ian Fleming of France. Last week, the prolific French author of spy thrillers, Gérard de Villiers, passed away of cancer.
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