Mario Puzo, who has died aged 78, said of his worldwide, bestselling novel The Godfather: "I wished like hell I'd written it better."
Puzo's remarkable success came about because he was broke and determined to write something which would make him money. He had a wife and five children to support.
"I was 45 years old, I owed $20,000 to relatives, finance companies, banks and assorted bookmakers and loan sharks. It was really time to grow up and sell out."
The public made his book one of the most widely read, post-war American novels, selling more than 21 million copies worldwide. Puzo's tale of treachery, violence, sex and revenge was also the story of the destruction of a family. It was written in the late 1960s, at the height of the war in Vietnam, when the country was tearing itself apart.
"Family values" was a crude slogan much favoured by right-wing politicians. But the figure of Don Corleone, with his peasant ways, holding the family together while struggling to restrain the impetuousness and ambitions of his sons and fend off the greed of rivals, deeply touched the popular imagination. Members of the Mafia, seldom interviewed about their literary judgments, were said to have loved the novel.
The Godfather remained a popular book for three decades, and in collaboration with Francis Ford Coppola, Puzo wrote the screenplays for three wildly successful and award-winning films based on his novels and the characters he created: The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, and The Godfather Part III.
Born the son of illiterate Neapolitan immigrants, and one of 12 children, Puzo grew up in Hell's Kitchen on the west side of Manhattan. His father worked as a trackman for the New York Central Railroad.
Mario Puzo was 12 when his father abandoned the family. The recollection of his strong-willed mother determined to support her children, and to protect them from the slums came flooding back when Puzo began to write The Godfather. The element of personal dignity in Don Corleone, and his ruthlessness, was based on his mother. Puzo later said that it was her voice in his ear while he was writing the Don's dialogue.
After the second world war (in which he served in the US army), he married Erika, a German woman who died in 1978, and worked as a clerk in a government office. He wrote freelance articles and published two novels, The Dark Arena (1955) and The Fortunate Pilgrim (1965), a story of Italian immigrant life in New York city. They earned him respectful reviews, but no noticeable sales.
For The Godfather in 1969 he received an advance of $5,000 but by the time the foreign rights, movie rights and paperback rights had been sold, he was a millionaire.
The public assumed that Puzo had written about the Mafia from personal knowledge. But, in The Godfather Papers (1972), he said that he was only aware of the lowest level of organised crime in his neighbourhood. It was as a lifelong gambler that he knew, from a distance, the street talk about "mobbed up", "respect" and the "vig".
Puzo knew the domestic interiors of the mafiosi, because he knew the tasteless interiors of their souls. Having read Hemingway to good effect, he was able to create a stylised Mafia dialogue which the public adored. Phrases from his book entered the vocabulary of the Mafia itself, as well as the vernacular.
Drawn to Hollywood for the buzz, the big bucks and the gambling, Puzo wrote screenplays for a string of other big-budget movies, including the two Superman films and The Cotton Club. His novels after The Godfather enjoyed better reviews than similar popular products.
In 1996 The Last Don completed the geographical shift of the organised crime family from the Lower East Side to Las Vegas and Hollywood. Omerta, a novel which returns again to the Corleone family, is due for publication next year.
Mario Puzo is survived by his five children and his companion of 20 years, Carol Gino.
For Puzo, the characters so vividly presented in The Godfather had, in the end, been swallowed by Brando, Pacino and Duval. It was no longer his Mamma's voice that he heard, but Brando's rasp, mandolins, sepia tints, and Coppola's soundtrack.