Prince Malko was occasionally compared to James Bond. “I consider myself a storyteller who writes to amuse people.” “I never had any pretensions of being a literary writer,” he said last year. He claimed each book took six to eight weeks and he succeeded in cramming five into each of the last eight years of his life as he reached the 200 mark with La Vengeance Du Kremlin – The Kremlin’s Revenge – last month. These lurid covers mirrored the racy content, glamorous settings and fast-moving intrigues of the pulp thrillers de Villiers typed on an old IBM electric typewriter at the rate of four a year. SAS also alluded to the British army unit and made for an eye-catching logo out of which stared the inevitable femme fatale with plunging neckline and gun in hand. The hero was known as SAS after an acronym based on his codename in French: Son Altesse Sérénissime. Known as “romans de gare”, these formulaic page-turners all featured Malko Linge, an Austrian prince freelancing for the CIA and using his espionage income to restore and run his ancestral home. In his native France, the 200 SAS spy novels written by Gérard de Villiers were a staple of popular culture and sold in their millions.
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