Boysie Oakes

Boysie Oakes is a secret agent created in 1964 by the British spy novelist John Gardner at the height of the fictional spy mania. Oakes is a richly comic character who is inadvertently taken to be a tough, pitiless man of action and is thereupon recruited into a British spy agency. He is, in actuality, a devout coward with many other character flaws who wants nothing more than to be left alone. The cowardly Oakes starred in another seven novels over the next 15 years and eventually, once again by inadvertence, becomes the head of the secret agency that has caused him to be in a constant state of terror for so long. As a primary feature of the long, on-going joke, during his years as an agent in the field and occasional assassin, Oakes is sometimes forced to hire a real murderer to carry out his assignments.

The first novel in the series, The Liquidator, was made into a 1965 film starring Rod Taylor as Oakes.

Boysie Oakes novels

• The Liquidator (1964)
• Understrike (1965)
• Amber Nine (1966)
• Madrigal (1967)
• Founder Member (1969)
• The Airline Pirates aka Air Apparent (1970)
• Traitor's Exit (1970)
• Killer for a Song (1976)