William Diehl

Who was William Diehl?

William Diehl was an American novelist and photojournalist.

Diehl was fifty years old and already a successful photographer and journalist when he decided to begin a writing career. His first novel, Sharky's Machine, was made into a movie of the same name directed by and starring Burt Reynolds. Diehl saw the movie shot on location in and around his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Its cast included Vittorio Gassman, Brian Keith, Charles Durning, Earl Holliman, Rachel Ward, Bernie Casey, Henry Silva, and Richard Libertini. It has been the most successful box-office release of a film directed by Reynolds.

Following the success of Sharky's Machine, Diehl relocated to St. Simons Island, Georgia in the early 1980s where he lived for the next 15 years before going back to the Atlanta area. While living on St. Simons, he completed eight more novels, including Primal Fear, which also became a movie by the same name starring Richard Gere and Edward Norton.

Diehl died at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on November 24, 2006, of an aortic aneurism. He was a resident of Woodstock, Georgia at the time of his death and was working on his tenth novel. He had two children, a boy and a girl from whom he was estranged.