Mario Puzo, author of the best-seller The Godfather which spawned the Mafia film trilogy, died yesterday of heart failure at his Long Island home, his agent said. He was 78.
Puzo, who won Oscars for screenplays for The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, had just completed his latest organised crime book Omerta, his agent, Neil Olson, said.
Born in the tough New York neighbourhood of Hell's Kitchen on Manhattan's West Side, Puzo wrote several other novels chronicling organised crime families, including The Sicilian (1984) and The Last Don (1996) which was made into a hit 1997 television mini-series.
But it was The Godfather in 1969, which sold more than 21 million copies, with which Puzo would always be associated, although the author said he wished he had "written it better . . . I wrote below my gifts".
Born in 1920 to illiterate Italian immigrants, he served in Germany during the second World War and attended New York's City College on the GI Bill. He started writing pulp stories for Male and other men's magazines and in 1955 published his first novel, The Dark Arena, to enthusiastic reviews.
His second book, The Fortunate Pilgrim (1964) which Puzo took nine years to write, was an autobiographical family novel about Italian immigrants and brought Puzo some of his strongest reviews.
He is survived by his companion of 20 years, Ms Carol Gino, and five children.