David Hagberg, author of international thrillers who was best known for his 30 Kirk McGarvey novels, died September 8, at age 76. The McGarvey titles included Abyss, The Cabal, The Expediter and Allah's Scorpion. His most recent novel in the series, First Kill, was published last May. Hagberg also wrote 13 novels under the name Sean Flannery.
The former Air Force cryptographer was occasionally referred to as "the Nostradamus of novelists" because many of his novels anticipated important events, including the fall of the Soviet Union before the Berlin Wall came down, the military coup against Gorbachev and the Chechnyan terrorists' massacre of a school full of children. His upcoming novel, Crash (April 2020), co-authored with the financial journalist Larry Light, explores a worldwide economic collapse precipitated by massive global debt and greedy, devious Wall Street billionaires.
Hagberg published his first novel, Twister, in 1975. He apprenticed as a spy author by contributing more than 20 "work-for-hire" entries in the Nick Carter-Killmaster series of espionage novels between 1976 and 1987 as well as wrote "work-for-hire" novels based on the Flash Gordon comic strip.
Co-author of two eco-thrillers with former Senator Byron Dorgan (D.-N.D.), Hagberg also co-wrote the memoir Mutiny with Boris Gindin, who had been the executive officer aboard the ship Storozhevoy, on which Tom Clancy based The Hunt for Red October. When Clancy's novel was published, Clancy took Gindin, Hagberg, their editor and their publisher, Tom Doherty, to a Baltimore Orioles game, where they sat in the owner's box and Gindin explained what really happened during the mutiny that helped to launch Clancy's career.
Hagberg's books were nominated for three Edgars and three American Mystery Awards. In addition, his Sean Flannery novel The Kremlin Letter was nominated for an American Book Award.