Background
Roderick Mayne Thorp was born on September 1, 1936, in New York City. He was the son of Roderick Mayne and Irene Elizabeth (Rehill) Thorp.
Roderick Mayne Thorp was born on September 1, 1936, in New York City. He was the son of Roderick Mayne and Irene Elizabeth (Rehill) Thorp.
Thorp received a Bachelor of Arts at the City College of New York in 1957.
As a young college graduate, Thorp worked at a detective agency owned by his father. He would later teach literature and lecture on creative writing at schools and universities in New Jersey and California, and also wrote articles for newspapers and magazines.
His film "Die Hard" was relatively faithful to "Nothing Lasts Forever", so it was not made as a sequel to the film version of "The Detective". Two other Thorp novels, "Rainbow Drive" and "Devlin", were adapted into TV movies.
Thorp died of a heart attack in Oxnard, California.
Thorp is known as the author of the two of his best-known novels which were adapted into popular films: his 1966 novel "The Detective" was made into a 1968 film of the same name, starring Frank Sinatra as Detective Joe Leland, and his 1979 sequel to "The Detective", "Nothing Lasts Forever", was filmed in 1988 as "Die Hard", starring Bruce Willis.
(When a young coast guard lieutenant commander, Sam Merril...)
(After five people are murdered in Laurel Canyon, and his ...)
1986(It is America's most notorious, unsolved, serial murder c...)
1995(Joe Leland returned from World War II with a chest full o...)
1966Roderick was a member of Writers Guild of America.
On April 22, 1957, Thorp married Noel Margaret Kennel. The marriage produced two children, Roderick M. III and Stephen Philip. The couple divorced in 1981. On March 17, 1988, Thorp married Claudia Lucille Yancey.
