Cruising author Gerald Walker dead at 75

The New York Times reports that Gerald Walker, whose novel Cruising was adapted into the controversial William Friedkin film, died Thursday at the age of 75. According to his wife, Joanna Simon, Walker died at Manhattan's New York-Presbyterian Hospital from complications of a stroke. He was an articles editor at The New York Times Magazine from 1963 to 1990 but was best known for his 1970 novel Cruising, about a string of murders in New York's gay leather underground. The 1980 Friedkin film, which starred Al Pacino, was the target of protests from gay activists who said the film would feed antigay stereotypes and fuel gay bashing. At the time of his death, Walker was finishing a mystery novel, Witnesses.