In 1978, when Representative Leo Ryan of California and others were shot in Guyana, where they were investigating the unfolding horror of the People’s Temple, the cult led by Jim Jones that ended in mass suicide, Mr. Jaffe reached out to a team of San Francisco Chronicle reporters, whose colleagues had also been attacked. Within a month, as The New York Times reported, 350,000 copies of “The Suicide Cult: The Untold Story of the Peoples Temple Sect and the Massacre in Guyana” had been printed.
In 1979, Mr. Jaffe paid the author Judith Krantz — the wildly popular creator of the “sex-and-shopping genre of fiction,” as Margalit Fox of The Times wrote in Ms. Krantz’s 2019 obituary — a record-breaking advance of more than $3.2 million (more than $14 million today) for her second novel, “Princess Daisy.” Mr. Jaffe’s bet was a sound one, and the book, about the enormously complicated adventures of the orphaned daughter of an actress and a Russian prince, rode atop the best-seller lists before becoming a television miniseries in 1983.
But the author whose work was closest to his heart, and who sold more books for him than any other writer, was Louis L’Amour, the stunningly prolific creator of irresistible Westerns, with whom he published more than 100 titles.
Marcus Henry Jaffe was born on Nov. 6, 1921, in Philadelphia. His father, Samuel Jaffe, was a family doctor. His mother, Lily (Bailey) Jaffe, was a teacher and a social worker. Marc was 16 when he entered Harvard, where he studied literature and history. After graduating in 1942, he joined the Marines and earned a Bronze Star for his combat service in World War II, in the Pacific theater.
After the war, Mr. Jaffe moved to Provincetown, Mass., where he worked as a scallop fisherman. By 1948, he was in New York City, first working for the men’s magazine Argosy and then New American Library, the paperback house, editing writers like Mickey Spillane and Gore Vidal.
