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| Jack Higgins | |
British author Henry Patterson, who wrote 85 novels, predominantly thrillers and in the espionage genre under the pseudonym Jack Higgins, died April 9, the Guardian reported. He was 92. Patterson sold more than 250 million copies worldwide and his books were translated into 60 languages.
He was best known for his World War II thriller The Eagle Has Landed, which was published in 1975, sold more than 50 million copies and was adapted into a British film of the same name starring Sir Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, Jenny Agutter and Robert Duvall.
HarperCollins CEO Charlie Redmayne said: "I've been a fan of Jack Higgins for longer than I can remember. He was a classic thriller writer: instinctive, tough, relentless. The Eagle Has Landed and his other Liam Devlin books, his later Sean Dillon series, and so many others were and remain absolutely unputdownable. Being part of his publishing for even part of his career has been a privilege--his passing marks the end of an era."
Patterson received a £75 (about $98) advance for his first novel, Sad Wind from the Sea, in 1959. Jonathan Lloyd, his literary agent and president of Curtis Brown, said he was at Collins Publishers when it received the manuscript of The Eagle Has Landed, and everyone there knew it would become a classic.
"Forty years later, Curtis Brown became his agent," Lloyd noted, "and it was thrilling to work again with Harry, and I look forward now to working with his wife, Denise, and daughter, Hannah, and the family on preserving and promoting his extraordinary legacy."
The Bookseller reported that from 1959 and 1974 his output was "prodigious," publishing as many as three or four books a year. In the late 1960s, he began publishing under his pen name Jack Higgins, with the first of his many bestsellers, The Savage Day and A Prayer for the Dying, coming out in the early 1970s. Other titles include Comes the Dark Stranger, Hell Is Too Crowded and To Catch a King. Patterson's final book, The Midnight Bell, was published in 2017.