Jeffrey Archer obit

Jeffrey Archer Dies: Bestselling ‘Kane & Abel’ Author & Politician Was 86

 He was not on the list.

Jeffrey Archer, the prolific British author and former politician, has died at the age of 86.

Archer’s publisher HarperCollins confirmed his death in a statement, revealing that the Kane & Abel writer died “suddenly and peacefully at home” on Monday. A cause of death was not disclosed.

Archer, a former Conservative member of Parliament, sold more than 300 million books during a writing career that spanned five decades.

HarperCollins claims that Archer, who also served in the House of Lords, is the only author ever to have been a No. 1 bestseller in fiction, short stories and non-fiction.

Archer’s work was adapted for the screen on many occasions, including the 1985 CBS miniseries based on Kane & Abel, which starred Peter Strauss as Abel Rosnovski and Sam Neill as William Lowell Kane.

ITV adapted First Among Equals in 1986, starring Jeremy Child, James Faulkner, David Robb and Tom Wilkinson, while Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less was adapted by the BBC in 1990.

His political career, which included a spell as the Conservative Party’s deputy chairman, was interrupted by a period in prison in 2001 after he was found guilty of lying and cheating in a 1987 libel case against The Daily Star newspaper.

“Jeffrey’s career is the stuff of publishing legend,” HarperCollins said in a statement, according to BBC News. “He spent a total of 14 years and five months on The Sunday Times bestseller lists and five and a half years on The New York Times bestseller lists, selling 300 million books in 119 countries in 49 languages.

“He was the master storyteller and an editor’s dream – phenomenally hard-working, utterly committed to completing draft after draft to get every word as perfect as possible, and a true champion of the ‘team’ nature of great publishing.”

His final book, Adam and Eve, is set to be released this month. Archer’s website claims that Paramount was developing an adaptation of Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less for the book’s 50th anniversary in August 2026.