Jeffrey Archer, British novelist, politician, dies at 86

LONDON — Jeffrey Archer, a best-selling British author and politician whose résumé teetered between achievement and disgrace, died on Monday. He was 86.

Archer died at his London home, The New York Times reported. His publisher, HarperCollins, announced his death in a statement.

Archer’s latest -- and now final -- novel, “Adam and Eve,” about the intertwined destinies of the rich and humble, was scheduled to be published on Tuesday, according to the newspaper.

The author of more than 40 books was elected to Parliament in 1969, the BBC reported. He became the Conservative Party’s leader in the mid-1970s and moved to the House of Lords in 1992.

Archer, called a “political Houdini” by the Times, including a perjury conviction in 2001. He was found guilty of creating false diaries and fabricating a story to win a 1987 libel action against the Daily Star newspaper. He had been awarded £500,000 in damages, the BBC reported.

He was released early in 2003 and returned to the House of Lords until he retired in 2024, according to The Guardian.

Archer’s first novel, “Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less,” was published in 1976 after he had been defrauded of his personal fortune, the Times reported.

“I was so low I would have sold fake Gucci bags on street corners,” Archer told The Chicago Tribune. “Once you’ve lost a million dollars, you may as well have lost a 100 million dollars.”

That novel, one of many thrillers, told the story of four men who banded together to defraud a con man who had robbed them of $1 million each, according to the Times.

Archer sold more than 300 million books in 119 countries, with the novels translated into 49 languages, The Guardian reported.

His 1979 novel, “Kane and Abel,” has sold more than 50 million copies, according to the Times.

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch called Archer’s death “devastating news”.

“We will miss him very much,” she told BBC Breakfast on Tuesday, adding that he had texted her earlier on Monday. “He did serve his time (in prison), he made amends, and he wanted to do a lot of good in the world.”

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