Henry Patterson, writer known by various pseudonyms, including Harry Patterson, Martin Fallon, Hugh Marlowe, James Graham and especially Jack Higgins, died in Jersey on April 9, “at 92, surrounded by his family”announced very soberly its publisher Harper Collins.
It is with great sadness that HarperCollins shares the news that Henry Patterson, most commonly known to the general public by the pseudonym Jack Higgins, has died at the age of ninety-two, at home in Jersey and surrounded by his family. Our thoughts are with them at this time. pic.twitter.com/UBCyqxz3lF
—HarperCollinsUK (@HarperCollinsUK) April 9, 2022
Very famous throughout the world, his work consists of more than sixty novels translated in 55 countries.
Born in England, in Newcastle upon Tyne, of Irish parents, Harry Paterson grew up in Belfast (Northern Ireland) where his family settled and lived there until the age of twelve. When her mother remarried she took her to live in Leeds. A mediocre student, he left school at fifteen to pursue various trades, before being posted to the East German border during the Cold War.
Back from the army, from 1950 to 1958, he earned a degree in sociology and social psychology after working alongside as a truck driver, farm boy, and even help in a circus (from 1950 to 1958). After training, he then became a teacher (and remained so until 1970) but immediately began to write as well.
Her first novel, The Gold of the red swamps, appeared in 1959. There followed a series of novels combining adventure, espionage and police investigations, which did not meet with great success.
The publication of The eagle has flown away in 1975, under the name of Jack Higgins, who narrated the kidnapping of Winston Churchill by the Third Reich changed the situation and made him one of the most widely read authors in the world. This was followed in the 1980s by thrillers like The Devil’s Claws, Confessional and The Eagle has disappeared. Some of his novels are adapted for film or television.
From 1992 and the publication of The Eye of the Typhoon which chronicles an assassination attempt on John Major, Higgins focuses on just one hero, Sean Dillon, a former Irish soldier, who will be at the heart of most of his novels since.