Melville House Books

Arthur Hailey, whose mega-selling 1968 novel Airport, followed up by Hotel, shot the high school dropout to international fame, died in his sleep last Wednesday at his home in the Bahamas. He was 84. As a New York Times obituary by Michelle O’Donnell notes, “Critics often dismissed Mr. Hailey’s success as the result of a formulaic style in which he centered a crisis on an ordinary character, then inflated the suspense by hopping among multiple related plotlines. But he was so popular with readers that his books were guaranteed to become best-sellers.” Hailey, who often spent more time researching his books than writing them, got his first break when “he was aboard a flight and began daydreaming about what would happen if all the passengers and crew were incapacitated and if it were left to him to land the plane.” He subsequently sold a teleplay on the idea for a substantial fee and was able to quit his job in sales at a Canadian publsiher. “I was now able to write full time,” he said. “That was all I ever wanted to do.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.