Popular French spy novelist dies.

Byline: Robert Worth

Gerard de Villiers, a French popular novelist whose raffish, long-running spy-thriller series, SAS, sold more than 100 million copies and became a kind of drop-box for real-world secrets from intelligence agencies around the world, died Thursday in Paris. He was 83.

The cause was cancer, said his lawyer, Eric Morain.

De Villiers was often compared with Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, who served as an inspiration when de Villiers created his own fictional spy hero -- Son Altesse Serenissime, or His Serene Highness, was his code...