Nelson DeMille, author of blockbuster films who thrilled millions, dies at 81 – DNyuz

Nelson DeMille, a beloved and prolific author whose riveting thrillers about terrorist hijackings, Russian spy schools, gruesome murders, Mafia leaders, war crimes and military malfeasance made him a publishing giant, died Tuesday in Mineola, New York. He was 81.

He died in a hospital on Long Island, near his home in Garden City, from complications of esophageal cancer, according to his son Alex.

DeMille’s writers “took you into wonderful worlds,” said Macmillan publisher Sally Richardson, who knew him for decades.

“His books were fun and literary,” she added in an interview. “He had a great understanding of human nature and a sense of humor, and he got all kinds of people — the poor and the refined. He defied all categories. Everybody wanted to publish Nelson.”

Mr. DeMille was the author of 23 books, 17 of which were bestsellers and all of which are still in print. At the time of his death, a total of 58 million “DeMilles” had been sold.

The muscular and friendly Mr. DeMille had not planned to devote himself to writing full-time.

As a young man, he served as an Army platoon leader in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in 1968. He went on to earn a degree in history and political science from Hofstra University, thinking he would become an architect or a lawyer. Instead, he worked as an insurance fraud investigator and wrote pulp detective novels on the side, earning $1,500 per manuscript.

“It was more of a kitchen table hobby,” he said.

Then his publisher asked him to write a biography of Barbara Walters, “The Five-Million-Dollar Woman” (1976). It came out under a pseudonym, Ellen Kay, his wife’s first two names at the time.

“The book did fine,” DeMille later wrote, “but I clearly wasn’t getting anywhere as a writer, no matter what name I put on the cover.”

The turnaround in his fortunes came two years later, with his groundbreaking novel, By the Rivers of Babylon, about a peacekeeping mission in the Middle East that goes terribly wrong. It sold for $425,000 (over $2 million in today’s money), a huge sum for an unknown author. Sales went well, but because The New York Times was on strike that summer, it failed to make the bestseller list.

Mr. DeMille’s narrators were of a certain type: worldly, quick-witted veterans and lawmen. His best-known character was John Corey, a former New York City police officer who worked as a contract agent for a federal anti-terrorist task force. Corey loves cold beer, crude one-liners and tough, complicated cases. He detests yuppies, poseurs and “schmucks from the Feds.”

“You can hear Nelson’s humor in Corey’s voice,” said Susan Lucci, the soap star and a longtime friend of Mr. DeMille’s (his uncle built her childhood home in Garden City). “His very lived-in voice.”

Early on, Mr. DeMille had hoped to one day turn his combat experiences into “the great American war novel.” But that attempt would not come until 1985, with “Word of Honor,” which depicted a My Lai-like brutality and explored its horrors years after the fact.

Time magazine praised the novel for its “gunmetal authenticity” and described it as “’The Caine Mutiny’ of the 1980s, a long, over-the-shoulder look at a time that grows larger as it recedes from view.”

Mr. DeMille, who favored blue blazers and a trim beard, turned out a book every two years, writing longhand on notepads with a No. 1 pencil. “Writing was never meant to be a two-handed endeavor,” he told The Times in 2009, “and besides, I now have my left arm free to hold a cup of coffee or leaf through a research book.”

His book-strewn office, which he called Area 51, was filled with the aroma of Marlboro cigarettes, black coffee and pencil shavings and was guarded by a bust of Julius Caesar — ​​Mr. DeMille was a Roman history buff — wearing various trappings. (He recently sported a T-shirt with the cover of “The Cuban Affair,” his 2017 caper about a down-on-his-luck charter boat captain and war veteran in Key West, Fla., who is hired to find a cache of cash hidden in Cuba.)

His handwriting, a wild scrawl, “was horrible,” said Patricia Chichester, his longtime assistant, who bravely typed his manuscripts into a computer. She said it took her five years to fully decipher his handwriting.

Mr. DeMille received thousands of fan letters each year, she added, and answered every one. DeMille fans sent portraits they had drawn of him and photos of themselves reading his books in far-flung places. They sent bottles of wine and Dewar’s White Label (his favorite whiskey), cookies with versions of his book covers on them and, once, an Adirondack chair painted to mimic the cover of “The Gatehouse,” his 2008 sequel to “The Gold Coast” (1990), about the clash between a WASP family and the mob boss who moves in next door.

“What makes ‘The Gold Coast’ shine is Nelson DeMille’s sharp evocation of the vulpine Bellarosa,” wrote Joanne Kaufman in The Times, referring to the character of the mob boss, “and of Sutter” – the protagonist, who is married to a rather gothic scion of Old Money – “a deliciously sarcastic, self-deprecating man betrayed by a midlife crisis.”

Nelson Richard DeMille was born on August 23, 1943, in Jamaica, Queens, and raised in nearby Nassau County, one of four brothers. His mother, Antonia (Panzera) DeMille, was a homemaker; his father, Huron DeMille, was a builder.

Nelson graduated from Elmont Memorial High School and attended Hofstra for three years before joining the Army and rising to lieutenant. He earned a Bronze Star, among other decorations, for his service in Vietnam, where a third of his platoon was killed or wounded. He returned to Hofstra in 1969 and graduated the following year.

In addition to his son Alex, with whom he collaborated on two novels — their third, “The Tin Men,” will be published next year — Mr. DeMille is survived by a daughter, Lauren, and another son, James. His marriages to Ellen Wasserman and Virginia Witte ended in divorce. His third wife, Sandra Dillingham, died in 2018.

Many of DeMille’s novels have been adapted into films, but only one, “The General’s Daughter” (1992), a military mystery about a rape and murder, was made into a film.

The film, in which Mr. DeMille had a writing credit, was released in 1999 and starred John Travolta as the investigator on the case, Madeleine Stowe as the rape expert who works with him, and James Woods as a high-ranking officer who is a suspect. In her review for The Times, Janet Maslin found the film disappointing.

Mr. DeMille took a sly dig at Ms. Maslin in a later book, “The Lion’s Game” (2000), about a vengeful Libyan terrorist and a horrific plane crash. At the end of the book, John Corey makes a comment about The Times and its film critic.

“Ms. Maslin reviewed a blockbuster,” Corey explains, “an action-adventure Middle Eastern terrorist film, a bit of everything, which I don’t think she liked, but like I said, it’s hard to follow her prose or her reasoning.” Corey adds, “I made a mental note to go see the movie.”

Mr. DeMille often included Easter eggs in his work, such as a character reading a book by Stephen King, whom he admired. He participated in charity auctions where bidders could compete to have characters named after them in future books.

And at the end of “Wild Fire” (2006), a John Corey film that chronicles a nightmarish response to the September 11 attacks, DeMille had a little fun with his acceptance speech.

Among the many names he thanked, using boldface type, were the Emperor of Japan and the Queen of England, “for promoting literacy”; William S. Cohen, the former Secretary of Defense, “for sending a note saying he liked my books”; Don DeLillo and Joan Didion, “whose books always appear before and after mine on bookshelves, and whose names always appear before and after mine in almanacs and many lists of American writers — thanks for being there, guys.”

And he thanked Paris Hilton, “whose family hotel chain sells my books in their gift shops.”

The story Nelson DeMille, author of blockbuster films who thrilled millions, dies at 81 first appeared on New York Times.