Olivia Goldsmith, best-selling author of 'First Wives Club', dies after a facelift

She was the spurned spouse who got everything - money success and fame. But her money could not buy her time. Olivia Goldsmith, best-selling author of the popular comic novel First Wives Club, has died aged 54 after complications following a facelift.

The self-deprecating author whose book was made into a Hollywood blockbuster starring Goldie Hawn in 1996, was reported to have had a reaction to the anaesthetic while undergoing surgery to remove loose skin from under her chin.

She was admitted to the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital in New York last week. According to her literary agent, Nicholas Ellison, she had a heart attack as she went under anaesthesia and lapsed into a coma. She was transferred to Lennox Hill hospital but died on Wednesday. General anaesthetics are a rare, but recognised, risk factor in surgery and in many cases carry a higher risk than the operation itself.

A former management consultant, Ms Goldsmith took up writing after divorcing her husband, a business executive whom she once described as "tremendously charismatic but totally irresponsible". The First Wives Club was her first book, published in 1992, which playfully imagined the revenge of three women who had been dumped by their husbands for younger second wives. Ms Hawn played a flashy Hollywood diva who had plastic surgery to retain her youthful looks.

A stream of comic novels followed for Ms Goldsmith, including Switcheroo, Young Wives and Uptown Girl. She admitted most of her work had an autobiographical element, often involving the age-old female dilemma of choosing between a solid, reliable man and a wicked, unreliable rogue.

Her husband fell into the rogue category. "I married a bad boy," she said. "He was charming and good looking."

She told an interviewer she wrote from anger. "I like things to work out fairly. That's why I write fiction because, in real life, everything isn't fair. The cards are stacked against women."