Pete Hamill, journalist, novelist and tabloid poet of New York, dies at 85

Pete Hamill, a high school dropout who became one of New York’s most revered chroniclers, writing gritty but lyrical newspaper columns and novels about crooked politicians, hapless sports teams and ordinary people whose lives were upended by crime, died Aug. 5 at a hospital in Brooklyn. He was 85.

Mr. Hamill was returning home from dialysis on Saturday when he fell and fractured his right hip, said his brother Denis Hamill, a writer. He underwent surgery but landed in the intensive care unit, “where his kidneys and heart failed,” his brother wrote in an email.