Nelson DeMille, who wrote "stylish suspense thrillers and adventure novels, including books that captivated millions of readers with their tales of terrorist plots, Mafia skullduggery and Long Island killings," died September 17 at age 81, the Washington Post reported. DeMille "had a cheery disposition that could mask his talent at concocting horrifying--and frequently riveting--fictional scenarios. He wrote about airline hijackings, nuclear threats, wartime massacres and psychotic hostage-takers, even as he sought to balance the violence with snappy dialogue and wry quips that helped widen his audience."
When DeMille signed a book deal with Simon & Schuster in 2014, the publishing house estimated that more than 45 million copies of his novels were in print worldwide. He wrote about two dozen novels, many featuring John Corey, a former homicide detective who first appeared in Plum Island (1997) and last in The Maze (2022). Other books were set in the world of espionage or in the military, and drew on DeMille's combat experience in Vietnam, where he earned the Bronze Star.
After returning home from Vietnam, he hoped to use that experience in crafting "the great American war novel," though his first books "were police procedurals, which he sold to small paperback publishers for $1,500 each--but he earned praise for later military novels including Word of Honor (1985)," the Post wrote. Word of Honor was adapted into a 2003 movie for TNT, starring Don Johnson. A screen adaptation of The General's Daughter (1992), starring John Travolta and Madeleine Stowe, was released in 1999.
After graduating from Hofstra University in 1970, DeMille worked odd jobs for a few years while struggling to launch his career as a writer. The Post noted that at times "he used a pen name, including for The Five-Million-Dollar Woman, a 1976 biography of journalist Barbara Walters--a paycheck job he said he undertook for the $2,000 advance--that he published under the pseudonym Ellen Kay, taken from his then-wife's first two names."
"The book did okay," he later wrote in an essay, "but I was clearly going nowhere as a writer, no matter what name I used on the cover."
He had his first major success with By the Rivers of Babylon (1978) and appeared to find a new niche as a spy novelist with The Charm School (1988). "I said to myself, since the Cold War is going to be around for the next 200 years, you have a career," he told the Times in 1997, adding: "I had about seven or eight great ideas, but the Cold War ended."
In 1990, he published The Gold Coast, which was set on the North Shore of Long Island and was optioned for a movie that was never made. One of his last novels, The Maze (2022), also had a Long Island setting.
DeMille "wrote his books in longhand, with a No. 1 pencil and stacks of yellow legal pads, and was unabashed about his literary ambitions, even as he knew he had little control over his ultimate legacy," the Post noted. In a 2007 interview, he said, "Charles Dickens was a popular, commercial writer, and now his books are called classics. Maybe a few of mine will be classics, hopefully, but if not, not."
