War of the Roses author a best-selling chronicler of dysfunction and duplicity

Warren Adler, who has died aged 91, was a best-selling author who chronicled dysfunction and duplicity, most notably in his divorce novel The War of the Roses, a dark comedy that served as the basis of a hit film.

A fixture of the Washington social scene, Adler owned four television and radio stations, and founded the now-defunct society magazine Washington Dossier with his wife and one of his sons.

He also presided over an advertising agency that represented political candidates such as Richard Nixon and real estate developments including the Watergate complex, whose

Warren Adler

name he said he created, inspired by the nearby novelist

Water Gate Inn b December 16, 1927

restaurant. d April 15, 2019

Although he started late, publishing his first book at 46, Adler wrote more than 50 novels, plays and works of poetry or short fiction, sometimes churning out two volumes a year. His characters were often plotting their escape from unhappy marriages, concealing affairs or scanning the obituary pages in search of wealthy widowers.

‘‘I’ve become a specialist in wrecked relations,’’ he told the New York Times in 1991. ‘‘My turf is the never-ending battle of the sexes that goes on to the grave.’’

Shortly before his death, he told his family he was writing a book in his head – a period piece set after World War I – although he knew he would never be able to put it to paper.

Influenced by authors including W Somerset Maugham and Georges Simenon, he said he had dreamed of becoming a novelist since 15 and for many years wrote ‘‘from 5 to 10 in the morning every day before going to my office’’. A Washington socialite for many years, his evenings were spent at the Jockey Club or parties on Embassy Row, picking up snippets of conversation he might use in his books.

He faced a quarter-century’s worth of rejections before publishing his first novel, Options (later reprinted as Undertow), in 1974. Quitting the advertising industry to write full time, he found his greatest success with The War of the Roses (1981), which tracked the implosion of Jonathan and Barbara Rose’s once-perfect marriage.

It was inspired by a conversation Adler once had at a dinner party. ‘‘A guy told me that he had to go home to his wife,’’ he said in 1989. ‘‘But he was dating my friend. He said, ‘I’m having a divorce, but we’re living in a house together. We share the refrigerator and we have separate times to use the washing machine.’ That triggered in me the ultimate married man’s fantasy.’’

Macabre, humorous and occasionally harrowing – in one scene, Barbara turns her husband’s beloved dog into pate – the novel was adapted into a 1989 film starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito,

who also directed. The film grossed US$160 million worldwide and led studio executives to rush to buy Adler’s books and manuscripts. Several were optioned, including his unpublished novel Private Lies, although few made it to the screen.

His short story collection The Sunset Gang (1977), about a group of elderly Jews in Florida, was adapted for the public television series American Playhouse in 1991 and later produced as an offBroadway musical. And in 1999, Adler’s novel Random Hearts (1984), about a man and woman whose spouses die in a plane crash, was turned into a film featuring Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas.

The adaptation failed to approach the success or acclaim of War of the Roses, which Adler turned into a play in 2013. (A separate

adaptation of the novel is slated to run on Broadway.) But he said that seven-figure profits from his work in Hollywood enabled him to fund his writing, broaden his audience and, hopefully, secure his legacy.

‘‘The money is great, but more important than the money is people taking my books seriously,’’ he said in 1990. ‘‘I’m shooting for my books to last. Otherwise I couldn’t spend all those days alone in a room doing this. But it’s what I love. I love novels. It’s a one-on-one communication system. The novel is still to me the greatest art form in the world.’’

Warren Adler was born in Brooklyn. The family lived with various relatives in the home of Warren’s grandparents, where 11 people shared a bathroom.

Adler studied English at New York University, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1947, served in the Korean War, and started advertising and public relations agency Warren Adler Ltd in 1957. In 1975 he established Washington Dossier, edited by his wife, Sonia, and published by his son David.

In 1978, Adler wrote an Esquire magazine feature about ‘‘rescuing’’ and ‘‘deprogramming’’ David from a cultlike commune run by the Unification Church, led by the Rev Sun Myung Moon. The incident drew national news coverage, with Adler saying he threatened to commit suicide as part of an effort to lure his son away from the church.

Sonia, who has dementia and is in a care home, survives him. ‘‘I do not believe she suffers emotional distress, but I do,’’ he wrote in one of his last published articles, a February essay. ‘‘Now I live alone in the home we shared, and I am trying to cope with the bruising experience of loneliness.

‘‘I am told it is a curable malady, and I am following the advice of others. I continue to write, exercise daily and force myself to socialise. I am told it will take time. I am 91. How much time?’’ – Washington Post

‘‘I’m shooting for my books to last. Otherwise I couldn’t spend all those days alone in a room doing this. But it’s what I love. I love novels.’’