Richard Jessup

Mr. Jessup wrote more than 60 books, most of them paperback originals about crime (A Rage to Die), detectives (Cry Passion), Indians (Comanche Vengeance) and adventure (The Deadly Duo, about an American reporter who tries to foil a murder on the Riviera).

His best-known work, The Cincinnati Kid, published in 1964 in hardcover and later made into a motion picture with Steve McQueen, Edward G. Robinson, Ann Margaret and Tuesday Weld, was highly praised in The Times.

Mr. Jessup attributed much of his outlook to a chance meeting with Albert Camus in Marsailles in 1945, during which they drank together for hours and the philosopher impressed upon the 20-year-old seaman his existential philosophy.

His last novel, Threat, published 1981, also dealt with a Vietnam veteran, this one who was working his way through Columbia University by robbing bookies in an effort to raise ransom money for his twin brother, a prisoner of the North Vietnamese.

He began writing Westerns in 1957 with Cheyenne Saturday and finishing with Chuka where he wrote the screenplay for the film of the same name for actor and producer Rod Taylor.

He used the name Telfair for an original novel based on the TV series Danger Man (the half-hour precursor to "Secret Agent", as it was known in the US) called Target for Tonight in 1962.