Sat 2 Jun 2007
Obituary: EDWARD BEHR (1926-2007).
Posted by Steve under Authors , Crime Fiction IV , Obituaries / Deaths NotedNo Comments
A long obituary for noted journalist and war correspondent Edward S. Behr appeared in yesterday’s New York Times. He died in Paris last Saturday at the age of 81. Among his many other jobs and positions, Mr. Behr was a reporter and editor for Newsweek magazine between 1965 and 1988.
According to the Times, he “covered wars in Algeria, Albania, Congo, Vietnam, Lebanon, and Northern Ireland … wrote about China’s Cultural Revolution … went to Cuba after the 1962 missile crisis. And in 1968 alone he covered the Tet offensive in Vietnam, the student riots in Paris and the Soviet occupation of Prague.”
Author of 19 books, including biographies of Nicolae Ceausescu and Emperor Hirohito of Japan, Mr. Behr began his career in journalism with Reuters in London while earning degrees from Cambridge University in 1951 and 1953.
Of interest to mystery readers, especially those who enjoy spy and suspense fiction, is his one entry in Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin:
BEHR, EDWARD (Samuel) (1926-2007)
* Getting Even (Harper, 1980, hc) [Paris] H. Hamilton, 1980. (No paperback editions.)
A bookseller on ABE describes the book this way, most likely taken, at least in part, from a blurb on the cover:
Mr. Behr was also the co-screenwriter for Half Moon Street, a film based on Paul Theroux’s Doctor Slaughter (H. Hamilton, UK, hc, 1984; U.S. title: Half Moon Street, Houghton Mifflin), a book also included in CFIV.
The film starred Sigourney Weaver and Michael Caine, with the plot line described on IMDB as follows:
A review in the New York Times says in part:
Mr. Behr also wrote a history of Prohibition in the US and large illustrated books about the Broadway musicals Miss Saigon and Les Misérables.