Larry Collins, 75; Bestselling Coauthor of Books Blending History and Suspense
LA Times
Larry Collins, the journalist and coauthor of “Is Paris Burning?” which laid bare a startling plot by Adolf Hitler to raze the City of Light if Allies recaptured it in World War II, has died. He was 75.
Collins died Monday of a cerebral hemorrhage in Frejus, France, according to his coauthor and neighbor Dominique Lapierre. An expatriate American, Collins lived in nearby Ramateulle on the French Riviera.
The two wrote novels and nonfiction works of popular history over four decades. After their initial 1964 blockbuster about the Nazi occupation of the French capital, they described Israel’s quest for independence in “O Jerusalem!” in 1972 and independence for India in “Freedom at Midnight” in 1975, followed by “Mountbatten and the Partition of India” in 1982.
Their novels showed the same meticulous research and historical accuracy as their nonfiction works. First came “The Fifth Horseman” in 1980, which imagines Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi placing a hydrogen bomb in New York City to enforce his demands. After several years of writing separately, they collaborated on a final novel, “Is New York Burning?” in 2004, plotted around a post-Sept. 11 nuclear attack by Osama bin Laden on New York.
Collins’ solo fiction thrillers included “Fall From Grace” in 1985, based on World War II counterintelligence to mislead Nazis about where Allied troops would invade France; “Maze” in 1989, about psychic mind control as a Cold War tactic used by the Soviet Union; “Black Eagles” in 1995, about the cocaine trade in black America; and “Road to Armageddon” in 2003, which plotted what Iran might do with a nuclear bomb.
The coauthors of half a dozen bestsellers met in 1954, when Collins was in the U.S. Army and Lapierre was in the French military, both based at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe outside Paris.
Collins said the idea for their first book came from a London newspaper item he happened to see in 1962 about Hitler’s obsession with obliterating Paris.
“Before then, hardly anyone knew of the threat Paris had faced and how narrowly it escaped,” he told Associated Press last year. “When we started researching, we found an elaborate plot.”
