Life
1929-2022 [pseud. of Harry Patterson; various early pseuds. incl. James Graham and Martin Fallon]; b. Newcastle-upon-Tyne; moved to Belfast with his mother after break-up to her marriage to his father, an Englishman, living at his grandmother’s house on the Shankill Rd.; read the Christian Herald to his bedridden grandfather; on returning to Leeds with his remarried mother, he won a scholarship to Roundhay Grammar School but left without qualifications; completed his National Service with the East Yorkshire Regt.; and served in the Household Cavalry [Royal Horse Guard] as an NCO; stationed in East Germany; studied for BA in Sociology as external student at London School of Economics [LSE], working as a labourer and a driver by day; taught at Allerton Comp. School; lectured in sociology aand criminology [sociopathology];
m. Amy [née Hewitt; m.1958] and four children (Sarah, Ruth, Sean and Hannah); commenced thriller-writing in 1959 and was soon able to quit teaching; wrote East Of Desolation (1968), A Game For Heroes (1970) and The Savage Day (1972) - the last set in Belfast; best known for The Eagle has Landed (1975) concerning a Nazi plot to kidnap Churchill with an Irish gunman called Liam Devlin; which sold over 250 million copies and successfully filmed in 1976; issued Eye of the Storm (1992), a fictional account of the attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Sean Dillon, the ruthless IRA-man and his colleagues, in the pay of an Iraqi millionaire; also wrote Thunder Point (1993), in which Dillon is recruited by British intelligence; divorced 1984 and remarried Denis Palmer; settled in Jersey; d. at home, 9 April 2022. WIKI.
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Works
Novels incl. The Dark Side of the Island (1963); The Year of the Tiger (1963); The Keys of Hell (1965); The Iron Tiger (1966); Midnight Never Comes (1966); Dark Side of the Street (1967); A Candle for the Dead (1966; also as The Violent Enemy 1969); East of Desolation (1968); In the Hour Before Midnight (1969); A Fine Night for Dying (1970); Night Judgement at Sinos (1970); The Last Place God Made (1971); The Savage Day (1972); A Prayer for the Dying (1973); The Eagle has Landed (1975); Day of Judgement (1978); Stormwarning ([1977]; To Catch a King (1979); Solo (1980); Comes the Dark Stranger (1982); The Valhalla Exchange [1978]; Luciano’s Luck [1983]; Exocet [1984]; Dillinger [1987]; Night for the Fox [1988]; Confessional [1986]; The Kufra Run [1987]; Thunder Point (1993); Angel of Death (1995); Flight of Eagles (1998); Day of Reckoning (2000). [The foregoing all listed up to 1993 in Jürgen Schneider & Ralf Sotscheck, Ireland: Eine Bibliographie selbständiger deutschsprachiger, Verlag
Georg Büchner 1989); g
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