Robert Daley, a prolific author "whose novels and nonfiction explored the grit and perils of police work, pro football, racecar driving, and other subjects that drew on his life as a New York Giants publicist, a New York Times foreign correspondent and a gun-toting New York Police Department spokesman," died May 26, the Times reported. He was 96. Daley wrote 31 books, including works on bullfighting, deep-sea treasure hunts, and horse racing, but his specialty was New York cops.
His best-known work was Prince of the City: The True Story of a Cop Who Knew Too Much (1978), which was adapted into the 1981 film, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Treat Williams. Six of Daley's books were adapted for movies or TV.
He was the NYPD's deputy commissioner for public affairs for a year in 1971-72, but it was not an ideal job for him. He had written nine books, been a correspondent for the Times in Europe for six years, and "cut a continental figure in his military trench coat and longish hair. In a department that valued discretion, he seemed miscast.... Daley had a staff of 35, a radio car, and drivers around the clock. He was often among the first at crime scenes, ducking under yellow tapes to examine evidence like a detective. He spoke freely to reporters, often to the dismay of detectives and Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy, who had appointed him," the Times wrote.
After Murphy asked him to resign over "differences of opinion" on policy, Daley left in May 1972. A year later, he published Target Blue: An Insider's View of the N.Y.P.D., a memoir about his experiences.
"Daley is an incurable romantic with a warped view of his own place in history," Mary Perot Nichols wrote in a review of the book in the Times. "He is the first public relations man in the Police Department's history to conceive of himself as the tail that wags the dog."
Many of Daley's later novels were set against the city's criminal justice system, including Year of the Dragon (1981), which was adapted into a 1985 film starring Mickey Rourke; Tainted Evidence (1993), about a prosecutor's case against a cop-killer (Lumet's 1996 film version was retitled Night Falls on Manhattan); and Wall of Brass (1994).
During the Giants' off seasons, Daley traveled in Europe and wrote freelance sports articles for the Times. His first book, The World Beneath the City (1959), grew out of a Times Magazine article about underground complexities. In 1959, Daley joined the Times staff, and for six years was a correspondent in Europe and North Africa.
His last novel, The Red Squad (2013), "explored the sinister world of the Police Department's Bureau of Special Services and Investigations, which in the 1950s pursued suspected Communists, sometimes trampling rights and destroying careers," the Times noted.
"Most writers spend most of their lives locked in small rooms typing, and they don't get paid very much," Daley noted in an introduction to his second memoir, Writing on the Edge: The Ups and Downs of a Freelance Career (2014). "I refused to live like that. Throughout, I have tried to manage my career in a different way, call it my way if you like."