Frederick Forsyth, the master of spy novels, dies

(AFP) British writer Frederick Forsyth, one of the masters of the spy novel as well as a former Royal Air Force pilot, reporter and secret agent, died Monday at 86, his literary agent announced.

Forsyth, who became an author out of financial necessity, wrote some twenty novels that have sold about 70 million copies worldwide, including The Day of the Jackal and The Kill List.

"We mourn the passing of one of the world's greatest thriller authors," Jonathan Lloyd said in a statement picked up by AFP. His agency, Curtis Brown, said Forsyth died surrounded by his family after a brief illness.

Forsyth drew heavily on his own life for inspiration. His novels are battlegrounds where mercenaries, spies, and outlaws collide in ruthless struggles for power.

Forsyth began writing out of economic necessity

It was in 1969 when it occurred to the Briton to start writing. Forsyth was 30 years old and was returning from Biafra, where he had covered the civil war in southeastern Nigeria for the BBC and was triggered by the proclamation of independence of the Republic of Biafra.

However, his pro-Biafra analyses did not please the official line of the broadcaster or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Forsyth resigned and was left penniless.

The Briton, born on August 25, 1938 in Kent, to a furrier father and a seamstress mother, then turned to his memories as a correspondent in Paris, where Reuters—which was looking for a French-speaking journalist—had sent him in the early 1960s.

Between 1961 and 1963, "I became the shadow of [Charles] De Gaulle," the then French president, he explained in his autobiography The Intruder.

When the French statesman suffered an assassination attempt southwest of Paris in 1962, Forsyth was in the French capital. "That was the backdrop for my first book."