JERRY OSTER

OSTER--Jerry, 77, died at his home in Chapel Hill, NC on January 26, 2020. He grew up in Queens and graduated from Columbia College in 1964. He was a reporter for United Press International, Reuters, and the New York Daily News. He wrote 21 novels, including Sweet Justice and Saint Mike, named Notable Books by The New York Times, and Nightfall, chosen as the best foreign crime novel published in Germany in 1999. His books were published in Brazil, France, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia. In the aughts, he turned to playwrighting and was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the 2005 Sewanee Writers' Conference. After moving to Chapel Hill in 1992 with his wife Trisha Lester, he worked in communications at the University of North Carolina and at Duke University. He is survived by his wife and his daughter by a previous marriage, Lily Stein Oster.