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Gene Hackman‘s film career is shorthand for greatness, from roles like Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation to Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. As Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield put it, “no film was ever worse off for having Hackman in it.” The actor, born in 1930, had his breakout role in Bonnie and Clyde before appearing in The French Connection, which won him the Best Actor award at the Oscars.
Hackman was wildly prolific in the 1970s through the early 2000s before his film career abruptly ended following 2004’s Welcome to Mooseport. He never formally retired from acting, but he became increasingly reclusive and was rarely spotted in public. He died at the age of 95 alongside his wife in their New Mexico home, and an investigation is currently underway.
His last essential role was Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), where he played the cantankerous patriarch of the titular family alongside Danny Glover, Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, and Owen Wilson.
Even as he became scarce on the screen, Hackman had a late career renaissance as a novelist, co-writing three novels alongside Daniel Lenihan and two solo novels. His co-author for the first three novels, Daniel Lenihan, was something of an unlikely collaborator. A marine archaeologist, Lenihan trained Hackman on scuba diving for his role in The Firm.
In a 2000 interview with The Guardian, Lenihan explained, “We used to talk about books that we enjoyed, and Gene of course is evaluating scripts all the time; and then we came up with ‘Heck, why don’t we just come up with a book like we like to read.” The result was Wake of the Perdido Star, a swashbuckling historical adventure. The pair would collaborate on two more novels, and Hackman wrote two books on his own, the last being Pursuit, published in 2013. Hackman’s five novels included historical adventures, cop dramas, and westerns.
Wake of the Perdido Star
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The 1999 novel, Hackman’s first collaboration with Daniel Lenihan, “is a moving story of a young boy’s coming of age on the high seas, full of authentic nautical and historical detail.”
Justice For None: A Novel
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Gene Hackman and Daniel Lenihan reunited on Justice for None, a historical drama about Boyd Calvin, a WWI veteran who finds himself accused of his wife’s murder. The book is currently out of print.
Escape from Andersonville: A Novel of the Civil War
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Gene Hackman and Daniel Lenihan’s third historical novel, Escape From Andersonville, was published in 2008. It’s currently out of print but available as an audiobook.
Payback at Morning Peak
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Hackman’s first solo novel, 2011’s Payback at Morning Peak, features the kind of tough protagonist that might have been played by Hackman. The gritty western follows Jubal Young on a quest for revenge.
Pursuit
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Hackman’s final novel was 2013’s Pursuit, a thriller about a cop who uncovers a link in a series of cold cases until the past catches up and puts her daughter in danger.
