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The author last lived on the British Channel Island of Jersey
Photo: HarperCollins Publishers/AP
English thriller author Jack Higgins has died at the age of 92.
This was announced by his publisher Harper Collins.
Higgins was born Henry Patterson on July 27, 1929 in Newcastle, England.
He served in the military before studying sociology at the London School of Economics.
Patterson became a teacher in the Northern Irish city of Leeds and wrote novels in his spare time, which sold only moderately from the late 1950s.
That all changed with the release of The Eagle Has
Landed
in 1975. The thriller follows a fictional plot to kidnap British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during World War II.
In a 2010 interview with The Guardian, Higgins recounted a phone call with his accountant about the success of his book.
His greatest success became the film
The accountant asked him what he wanted to achieve with the letter, Higgins said.
"I replied that I wasn't sure and then jokingly added that it would be nice to make a million when I retire," Higgins told The Guardian.
Then his accountant said, "Well, you're a bloody fool.
Because that's how much you've earned just this week.
And what do you want to do now?'
Higgins' most successful work, The Eagle Has Landed, was made even more popular by the 1976 film adaptation.
Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland and Robert Duvall were among the stars of the film of the same name.
He became a box office hit.
More than 250 million books sold
Charlie Redmayne, who oversaw the author's publishing company Harper Collins, said in a statement Higgins' death marked "the end of an era."
“I've been a Jack Higgins fan for longer than I can remember.
He was a classic thriller writer: instinctive, tough, relentless,” says Redmayne.
Patterson wrote nearly 80 books, most under the pen name Jack Higgins.
Other Higgins titles included "The Eagle Has Flown"
(German: "The eagle has escaped") or
"Day of Reckoning"
(German: "Hour of Fear")
.
According to the publisher, the novels have sold more than 250 million copies and have been translated into dozens of languages.
Patterson is survived by his wife Denise and four children from a previous marriage.
flg/AP