Jack Higgins, Author of ‘The Eagle Has Landed,’ Dies at 92

Within the Nineteen Sixties, the primary Jack Higgins novels had been revealed. (The writer selected the pseudonym after a great-uncle who had been a gunman with Protestant militants in Belfast.)

Mr. Higgins was stung as tutorial colleagues poked enjoyable at his thrillers. So he wrote a “critical” novel, “A Phoenix within the Blood,” about racial prejudice in Britain.

When the e-book was revealed by Barrie & Rockliff of Britain in 1964, it acquired “terribly good opinions” from the highbrows who would look down on his later work, Mr. Higgins recalled. But it surely bought just one,600 copies.

Not content material to be revered by professors however ignored by the Everyman, he went again to writing thrillers, usually working with pen and pill. After the spectacular success of “The Eagle Has Landed,” Mr. Higgins grew to become a resident of Jersey, which is a British island however not a part of the UK, to flee excessive earnings taxes in Britain.

His first marriage led to 1984, and he blamed the breakup, at the very least partly, on his fame. “When you set out on the voyage of success, others haven’t any selection within the matter. All the things’s altering, they usually’re being dragged alongside — the spouse, the youngsters,” he stated within the 1987 interview with U.P.I. “Instantly you’re not the identical particular person.”

Survivors embrace his second spouse, Denise; and a son, Sean, and three daughters, Sarah, Ruth and Hannah, from his first marriage.

Mr. Higgins generally famous wryly that whereas his opinions on literary issues had been typically sought whereas he was a trainer, they had been much less in demand after he grew to become a rich author. However he had a way of his personal value.

“I’m not pretending I’m Charles Dickens or something,” he stated within the 2000 interview with the Belfast newspaper. “However no matter I do, no matter it’s that makes up a ‘Jack Higgins’ e-book, it’s not like what anybody else does.”

David Stout, a reporter and editor at The New York Occasions for 28 years, died in 2020. Jack Kadden contributed reporting.