Novelist Harold Robbins, who chronicled the sex-and-drug filled lives of the jet-set rich and famous in such books as "The Carpetbaggers," died Tuesday at age 81, his publicist said.
The author, who boasted "All my characters are real. They are written as fiction to protect the guilty," sold more than 750 million books in a career that spanned almost 50 years.Readers could not get enough of his books that drew heavily from the lives of such celebrities as Howard Hughes and Marilyn Monroe as well as other Hollywood movers and shakers and millionaires from Monaco to Miami.
Critics, however, called him a master of cliche and hackneyed prose and said some of his later books made no sense. Many of his books were made into movies.
Publicist Dick Delson said Robbins died of respiratory heart failure in Desert Hospital in Palm Springs, Calif., with his wife, Jann, at his bedside. He is also survived by two daughters, Adreana and Caryn, from previous marriages.
Robbins wrote his first book, "Never Love a Stranger," on a bet.