Ira Levin

He wrote short books.

Unlike Norman Mailer, Levin never used a paragraph when a sentence would do, and never used a sentence when a single word would suffice. He used dialogue to advance the story, define character and build suspense. I remember being in my mid-20s, the delight I felt picking up a hardcover of The Stepford Wives at the Edgartown Library on the Vineyard, and realizing it was under 200 pages long. That seemed almost poetic.

He understood how our modern social manias and paranoia could easily slide into the supernatural and fantastic, and how these same elements of the supernatural and horrific can contain elements of black humor, all of which is so elegantly summed up by the four words The Boys from Brazil. I remember being a kid and hearing that title, probably the movie version, and dying to find out what it meant. To this day I think it's probably one of the most perfect titles ever.

He wrote about New York in a way that made it glamorous, scary and funny all at once. I remember one of my first trips to the city, when I came to meet my first agent and sign my first book deal. I stumbled across a film crew on the Upper West Side and saw Sharon Stone coming out of a brownstone. They were shooting the movie version Levin's novel Sliver. Later that day I found out my agent also represented him. I felt honored.

I own mass market paperbacks of most of his novels. When I got stuck on a chapter opening, I used to open them up and flip through just to see where and how he attacked the scene. It was like working one-on-one with a master craftsman.

Now he's gone.

And the world is that much emptier.