Obituary: Peter Benchley

Peter Benchley, author. Died aged 65

Peter Benchley, author of the bestseller Jaws that was the basis for the blockbuster movie that terrified beachgoers and kept many out of the water for years, died peacefully at his home in Princeton, New Jersey.

Well-known for other water-based suspense fiction including The Deep and The Island, which also spawned films, he died of complications from pulmonary fibrosis, his son-in-law Chris Turner said.

"It was peaceful," he said, adding that the writer's wife, Wendy, and other family members were by his side.

In addition to the fame he achieved as a novelist, Benchley was a reporter for the Washington Post and Newsweek, wrote for magazines and was a speechwriter for President Lyndon Johnson from 1967 until January 1969.

The Harvard graduate, who grew up in New York City and went to prep school in New Hampshire, was the grandson of writer and humorist Robert Benchley.

But it was the 1974 novel Jaws, about a series of gruesome shark attacks that cause panic in a placid beach resort, that won Benchley the kind of fame rarely accorded any writer of popular fiction.

The book has sold more than 20 million copies, and Benchley even had a cameo as a reporter in the 1975 Steven Spielberg film, which spawned a series of inferior sequels.

Benchley said he had been interested in sharks since his childhood days spent on the island of Nantucket off Massachusetts. Then, in 1964, he read about a fisherman who caught a 2064kg great white shark off Long Island.

"I thought to myself, 'What would happen if one of those came around and wouldn't go away?'

"That was the seed idea of Jaws," he said in an interview on his website.

But he did not pursue the idea until 1971. By the time the book, his first novel, came out in early 1974, it had earned more than $US1 million before the first press run, including $US575,000 for the paperback rights and from sales to book clubs and the film's producers.

Benchley continued his lifelong fascination with the sea and its potential terrors with The Deep, about divers looking for treasure, and The Island, in which sailors are terrorised by modern pirates. Among his latest books was Shark Life: True Stories About Sharks and the Sea, which was published only last year.

"Everything I've written is based on something that has happened to me or something that I know a great deal about," Benchley said.

But, he noted, he was never injured by any sea creature other than jellyfish stings or sea urchin spines, although he was nearly bitten by sharks a few times.

Other books included White Shark, Beast, about a giant squid, and Rummies, about an alcoholic's journey through recovery and rehabilitation.

Besides his wife, Benchley is survived by two grown children.

- REUTERS