Other de Villiers books have included even more striking auguries. command center in Benghazi (a closely held secret at that time), which was to become central in the controversy over Stevens’s death. Christopher Stevens, and included descriptions of the C.I.A. The novel, “Les Fous de Benghazi,” came out six months before the death of the American ambassador, J. Nearly a year ago he published a novel about the threat of Islamist groups in post-revolutionary Libya that focused on jihadis in Benghazi and on the role of the C.I.A. Other pop novelists, like John le Carré and Tom Clancy, may flavor their work with a few real-world scenarios and some spy lingo, but de Villiers’s books are ahead of the news and sometimes even ahead of events themselves. De Villiers has spent most of his life cultivating spies and diplomats, who seem to enjoy seeing themselves and their secrets transfigured into pop fiction (with their own names carefully disguised), and his books regularly contain information about terror plots, espionage and wars that has never appeared elsewhere. The books are strange hybrids: top-selling pulp-fiction vehicles that also serve as intelligence drop boxes for spy agencies around the world.
GERARD DE VILLIERS SAS NOVELS SERIES
espionage series at the rate of four or five books a year for nearly 50 years. The book was the latest by Gérard de Villiers, an 83-year-old Frenchman who has been turning out the S.A.S. “It really gave you a sense of the atmosphere inside the regime, of the way these people operate, in a way I hadn’t seen before.” “It was prophetic,” I was told by one veteran Middle East analyst who knows Syria well and preferred to remain nameless. And most striking of all, it described an attack on one of the Syrian regime’s command centers, near the presidential palace in Damascus, a month before an attack in the same place killed several of the regime’s top figures. It detailed a botched coup attempt secretly supported by the American and Israeli intelligence agencies. Set in the midst of Syria’s civil war, the book offered vivid character sketches of that country’s embattled ruler, Bashar al-Assad, and his brother Maher, along with several little-known lieutenants and allies. Unlike most paperbacks, though, this one attracted the attention of intelligence officers and diplomats on three continents. This mission is enormously appealing, but also proves enormously dangerous, as the same madman of God who is trying to kill al-Senussi also takes aim at Malko.Last June, a pulp-fiction thriller was published in Paris under the title “Le Chemin de Damas.” Its lurid green-and-black cover featured a busty woman clutching a pistol, and its plot included the requisite car chases, explosions and sexual conquests. The CIA, which needs Malko as much as he needs them, sends the Austrian aristocrat to Cairo to learn more about al-Senussi’s plans by seducing his companion, a ravishing British model. But the CIA has its own plot for the prince: Now that Qaddafi has been overthrown, al-Senussi is their best bet to set up a constitutional monarchy and stem the Islamist tide in Libya. When terrorists try to shoot down a plane carrying Libyan prince Ibrahim al-Senussi, it is clear that someone wants him dead. Its hero, Malko Linge, an Austrian aristocrat, spends his time freelancing for the CIA in order to support his playboy lifestyle. Published from 1964 until his death in 2013, his bestselling SAS series of 200 spy novels, starring Malko Linge, was long considered France’s answer to Ian Fleming, with Malko as his James Bond. Gérard de Villiers (1929–2013) spent his five-decade career cultivating connections in the world of international intelligence, which allowed him to anticipate geopolitical events before they occurred-and to masterfully blend fiction with an insider’s knowledge of international affairs. THE MADMEN OF BENGHAZI, available for the first time in the U.S., is a gripping, racy, ripped-from-the-headlines espionage thriller set in volatile post-Qaddafi Libya.
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