The news emerged after four of the wranglers on the set of the big budget adaptation of JRR Tolkien's novel blew the whistle to the animal rights organisation and said the deaths were preventable.
"Brian McGreevy's novel blew me away, and the material lends itself perfectly to long format storytelling.
Virago finally brought it out in 1982, and followed it with her second two novels, Blow Your House Down (1984) and Liza's England (1986).
Mendes's movie has probably softened the novels blow, and lessens the importance of the am-dram scene at the beginning - in his final hours, Richard Yates is said to have read this chapter aloud on his deathbed.
Peter Decker, the Los Angeles police lieutenant and family man who has always been the soul of calm, compassionate humanity in Faye Kellerman's crime novels, blows his stack in STALKER (Morrow, $25) when his daughter, a rookie on the force, privately takes on one of his investigations and nearly gets herself killed.
Pat Barker's first novels, including Blow Your House Down, the best novel of the Yorkshire Ripper's reign of terror, occupy the same territory.
Kanin also wrote novels, including Blow Up a Storm (1959), A Thousand Summers (1973), and Moviola (1979); Cast of Characters (1969), a collection of short stories; and nonfiction such as Tracy and Hepburn: An Intimate Memoir (1971), Hollywood (1974), and Together Again!
He said his recent reading of a first edition of the novel "just blew me away - it had so many meanings and nuances".
I mean, you know, this is a novel; you can blow up anything you like - the Houses of Parliament, Ann Widdecombe, Wales.
