Sadly, Paul Gillette passed away in 1996. Below is his obituary, as it ran in The Hollywood Reporter.

Paul Gillette, the author of the 1971 novel "Play Misty for Me," on which the Clint Eastwood movie was based, died Jan. 6, 1996 of a heart attack at his office in Burbank. He was 57.

A prolific writer, playwright, producer and a consultant for film and television projects, Gillette’s published novels included "How Did a Nice Girl Like You Get Into This Business," which was made into a 1968 motion picture starring Barbi Benton, Broderick Crawford and Robert Morley; "Cat O’Nine Tails," which also became a movie, "Carmela," about grand opera, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1972; and "The Chinese Godfather."

Gillette’s was a familiar byline in Playboy and Esquire and many other magazines and newspapers, and he wrote numerous nonfiction books, including "Inside Ku Klux Klan" and "The Lopinson Case," about a double murder in Philadelphia.

In the late 1960’s, he was a writer and host for CBS’ "Camera Three" and produced the PBS series "Football: Only a Game" and "Enjoying Wine With Paul Gillette."

His play "Red River Rats" ran for twenty weeks in 1994 at the Burbage Theater in West Los Angeles; it won him his second Pulitzer Prize nomination.

A native of Carbondale, Pa., Gillette wrote for the Carbondale Daily News as a young man and later became a general assignment reporter and photographer for the Scranton, Pa., Tribune.

Gillette first broke into the national media in 1960 when Playboy published his translation from the Latin of Petronics "Satyricon," regarded as the world’s first novel.