William Diehl
Michael Carlson

William Diehl was already 53 when he debuted with the best-selling Sharky's Machine (1978) a fast-paced thriller which rocketed its eponymous Atlanta detective through a maze of international corruption, sex, and killing. It became a successful movie starring Burt Reynolds, and featured the author in a cameo role as a pimp.

Despite success as both a journalist and photographer, Diehl had always nurtured the dream of writing fiction. At his 50th birthday party, friends produced an ice-cream cake shaped like a typewriter. Watching it melt, Diehl felt it was too close a metaphor for his own dreams. The next day, he sold his cameras, borrowed $5,000 from a friend, and began writing, sketching out the plot for Sharky's Machine while serving on a jury. The book's success came just in time; as his agent was telling him the book had been accepted by a publisher, his phone was disconnected due to his unpaid bill.

Diehl was born December 4, 1924 in Jamaica, Queens. According to family lore Mae West was a neighbour and baby-sat him. His interest in journalism began when, in 1937, he was on a school trip watching the arrival of the zeppelin Hindenburg in Lakehurst, New Jersey. The Hindenburg's explosion was one of the biggest stories of the decade. Diehl had just turned 17 when Pearl Harbor was attacked, but he lied about his age and joined the Army Air Corps, serving as a ball-turret gunner on a B-24 and winning the Distinguished Flying Cross and five other decorations.

After the war he studied at the University of Missouri, and in 1949 got a job on the Atlanta Constitution by waylaying its noted editor Ralph Mc Gill as he left the paper's offices. Learning Diehl had been a ball-turret gunner, McGill said anyone who'd been through that deserved a job, and hired him to write obituaries. He worked as a reporter and columnist before going freelance in 1955. In 1960 he began editing the newly-launched 'Atlanta' magazine. He taught himself photography to help fill the magazine's pages, and began a second freelance career.

Working as a photographer for the United States Information Agency he met Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and was drawn into the civil rights movement. In 1967, while touring Mississippi with King, his throat was slashed by two assailants, who were never caught. Seven years later, by now on his second marriage, he reached his fiftieth birthday, received that melting cake, and realised he'd 'been working for thirty years and what did I have to show for it?'

After Sharky's Machine and The Chameleon (1981) his novels became more exotic, but somewhat less successful. His style was functional, moving at high speed through twisting plots filled with incident, but the hard edge which made Sharky such an effective character wasn't always present in his other lead characters.

He slowed the pace for his sixth novel, Primal Fear (1992), which revitalised his career. It introduced lawyer Martin Vail, who defends a boy accused of slashing the throat of an archbishop. The novel's stunning twist ending made it a natural for film, and Edward Norton rose to stardom playing the accused, opposite Richard Gere's Vail. Two more Vail novels followed, the third of which, Reign of Hell (1997) was an early warning about the domestic terrorism of right-wing fundamentalists in America. His health began to fail, and after a five-year hiatus, released Eureka (2002), an historical thriller set in the first half of the 20th century. While writing the book, Diehl lost six toes and nearly died from circulation problems traceable to severe frostbite suffered in the turret of his B-24. He and his third wife, Virginia Dunn, a former television reporter, moved from their long-time home on St Simon's Island to Woodstock, north of Atlanta, to be closer to medical care. Diehl died 24 November 2006 from an aortic embolism after being hospitalised. His tenth novel, Seven Ways To Die, was scheduled for publication in 2007, and is believed to be all but complete.

Michael Carlson

Posted at 11:27AM Wednesday 11 Feb 2009