A diabetic, Bunker died Tuesday at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank of complications following surgery to improve circulation to his legs, said screenwriter Robert Dellinger, a longtime friend.

At 17, Bunker became the youngest inmate at San Quentin after he stabbed a prison guard at a youth detention facility and later escaped from a Los Angeles County jail, where he was serving a sentence for another crime.

It was during his 18 years of incarceration for robbery, check forgery and other crimes that Bunker learned to write.

In 1973, while still in prison, he made his literary debut with "No Beast So Fierce," a novel about a paroled thief who has trouble re-entering society. Author James Ellroy called the novel "quite simply one of the great crime novels of the past 30 years; perhaps the best novel of the Los Angeles underworld ever written." It was made into the 1978 movie "Straight Time," starring Dustin Hoffman.

Bunker co-wrote the script and played a minor role as a criminal who helps Hoffman plan a heist. Other big-screen credits include 1985's"Runaway Train," an action drama about two escaped convicts played by Jon Voight and Eric Roberts.

Themes of crime and prison life appeared in his other novels, "The Animal Factory," "Little Boy Blue" and "Dog Eat Dog."

"It has always been as if I carry chaos with me the way others carry typhoid. My purpose in writing is to transcend my existence by illuminating it," Bunker once told an interviewer.

As an actor, Bunker had nearly two dozen roles, most notably as Mr. Blue in Quentin Tarantino's 1992 violent drama "Reservoir Dogs." More recently, he played a convict in the remake of "The Longest Yard."

Bunker's last published book, a 2000 memoir entitled "Education of a Felon," features an introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist William Styron praising him as "an artist with a unique and compelling voice."

"Bunker wrote with energy and a muscular style that very few people have, and his words just literally jump off the page," said Dellinger, who met Bunker in 1973 at the federal prison on Terminal Island, where Dellinger was the inmate founder and teacher of a creative writing class.

Born in Hollywood, Bunker spent half a dozen years in foster homes after his parents divorced when he was 4. By 12, he was living in the first of a series of juvenile reform schools.

He is survived by a son, Brendan, who he had with ex-wife Jennifer Steele.

A memorial service was scheduled Sept. 10 at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood.

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More details are available on the BBC News site:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/4713659.stm