Best-selling US novelist Tom Clancy dies at 66

LOS ANGELES - Best-selling US novelist Tom Clancy, who was best known for penning "The Hunt for Red October" and other popular military thrillers, has died at the age of 66, his publisher said Wednesday.

Penguin Books USA said on its official Twitter account that, " We are saddened by the passing of beloved best-selling author Tom Clancy. Fans worldwide, including us, will miss him greatly."

"Tom Clancy, 1947-2013: Beloved Author, Colleague, Friend, Patriot," G.P. Putnam's Sons, whose imprint that appeared on Clancy's books is a unit of Penguin, also posted on its official Twitter feed.

The writer died on Tuesday in a hospital in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, local media reported, without giving the cause of his death.

Clancy was one of the most successful writers in the literary scene whose career spanned more than three decades. Topping The New York Times bestseller list 17 times, Clancy authored a large number of best-sellers, most of them concerning espionage and military plots, and four of them have been turned into box-office blockbusters.

The most popular film "The Hunt for Red October" was based on Clancy's 1984 novel. The 1990 movie pitted Alec Baldwin, a CIA analyst-turned-politician, against Sean Connery as a Soviet submarine captain, grossing more than 200 million US dollars in ticket sales.

The author also saw two sequels, "Patriot Games" and "Clear and Present Danger" which starred Harrison Ford, and 2002 thriller " The Sum of all Fears" starring Ben Affleck, hitting theaters to rave response.

Clancy was also one of the first authors to develop a series of video games based on his works. A "Hunt for Red October" PC game debuted in 1987. ?

His next book "Command Authority" is slated to be published on December 3. A fifth Ryan film "Jack Ryan: Shadow One" opens in theaters this December.