Jeffrey Archer said ‘I’ll live to 86’ a year before his death: He revealed his final book was based on Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill’s rivalry and claimed it was ‘better than Kane and Abel’

Jeffrey Archer had a date in mind. A year before his death at 86, the bestselling British novelist told PEOPLE that he expected to live long enough to finish the book he had been planning for years. “I’ll live to 86. Don’t worry,” Archer recalled telling his publishers when they urged him to begin the project sooner. He did. Archer died suddenly and peacefully at his home on Monday, aged 86, according to his publisher HarperCollins, with no cause of death disclosed. And on Tuesday, October 6, his final novel, Adam & Eve , was scheduled for publication, bringing an extraordinary coincidence to the end of a writing career that stretched across five decades. Archer's official website describes it as his final novel. The timing gives fresh significance to an interview he gave PEOPLE last year, when he spoke openly about retiring from large-scale novel writing and revealed the idea behind his last book.

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