BAHAMAS: Arthur Hailey, the best-selling author who plucked characters from ordinary life and threw them into extraordinary ordeals, has died at his home in the Bahamas. He was 84.
Hailey died in his sleep on Wednesday a few hours after having dinner with two of his six children at his home in Lyford Cay on New Providence Island, according to his wife, Sheila. Doctors believed he had a stroke.
"Arthur was a very humble man but was delighted with the letters he used to get from readers praising his books. He was incredibly proud of them."
The British-born writer's knack for turning the mundane into thrilling tales resulted in 11 of his books being published in 40 countries and 38 languages, with 170 million copies in print. He used the nitty-gritty of bank procedures and hotel management as backdrops for page-turning plots, preferring real-life characters such as managers and doctors to vampires and spies. "I don't think I really invented anybody," Hailey said in a 2001 interview. "I have drawn on real life."
In the 1968 novel Airport, for instance, manager Mel Bakersfield faces a crisis when a mad bomber boards a flight. The characters of Airport later hit movie screens, with Burt Lancaster starring as Bakersfield. Other novels made into films included Hotel, Wheels, The Moneychangers and Strong Medicine.
Born on April 5th 1920 in Luton, Hailey stopped school at 14 because his parents could not afford to send him beyond the stste system.
He served as a pilot in the Royal Air Force during the second World War, flying patrol fighters in the Middle East and transport planes in India.
He left England in 1947 for Canada, where he later received citizenship (while retaining his British citizenship) and worked as a sales promotion manager for a tractor-trailer manufacturer in Toronto. He eventually quit to write TV screenplays. His first novel was published in 1959.
Hailey received mixed reviews from critics, who praised his research but said his writing sometimes slipped into cliches. Reviewing his 1979 novel Overload - about an energy crisis - one critic wrote: "His lack of literary finesse is overcome by his unerring instinct for a hot subject."