See also the death of Dora in Time Enough for Love. Pretty damned heart-wrenching for an ordinary death of old age.
I may be the only person in the entire world who’s ever felt this, but Javert’s death in Les Miserables. If he’d been just that much less rigid, a tiny bit more flexible in his morality, he could have lived. Because his death was almost entirely caused by the cognitive dissonance of a convicted criminal who had a deep morality that happened to not quite jibe with the law, but that demonstrated Christian beliefs more than the law did. Javert couldn’t live in a world that contained such a contradiction (to him).
The whole scenerio that leads to the death of Walt in John Irving’s The World According to Garp
Yes. This is what I came in to post, as well.
Mike & Professor Bernardo de la Paz from Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. To die in the moment of victory.
Tywin Lannister from A Song of Fire & Ice. I didn’t see that one coming.
Kossara from Poul Anderson’s A Knight of Ghost and Shadows.
Raven from Poul Anderson’s The Night Face.
Sydney Carlton’s death in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Dickens also wrote several other memorable deaths in his other novels.
That’s exactly what I was coming in to say.
Little Ann from Where the Red Fern Grows. Coming on the heels of Old Dan’s death, if you don’t cry you’re an inhuman monster.
Patrick O’Brian was very good at developing a character, then killing him off in a combat. Barrett Bonden is the best example - major supporting character in 19 books, then is one of only 2 casualties during a one sided and meaningless battle.
Scarlett’s Web? Is that the porn version or the Clue version?
Fiddle-de-dee! It’s obviously the antebellum Southern version.
When I lived at home, I’d read my father’s books after he was finished with them. As I was reading War and Remembrance, my father joked, “Have you got to the part where Warren dies yet?”
“Er, no.”
“Really, you’re not kidding?”
My father was devastated. He loved books as much as I do, and he thought I was farther along. To him, he had, albeit unknowingly, committed a cardinal sin.
You can tell because the Black spiders are the ones actually doing the spinning.
Affter seeing the movie “From Russia With Love” as a kid, I was eager to read Ian Fleming’s novel. And when I read the final chapter, where James Bond is killed (WTF?!?!?!?!?!) I was dumbfounded. I seem to recall reading elsewhere that Fleming had had enough of writing about this particular character and wanted to wrap the franchise up and was eventually coaxed into “resurrecting” Bond for the next novel, “Dr. No,” and the many that followed.
The other death that really stuck with me all through the years was that of Snowden in “Catch-22.”
Princess Suldrun in Jack Vance’s Lyonesse.
I had to put the book down and go outside.
That’s very interesting, because in the Vance I’ve read (and I’ve read a lot, but not Lyonesse ), Vance is fairly remote and cold toward his characters.
Well that is excactly how Suldrun dies, cold and remote.
And the description of the honors done to Johnny after he was found dead, that really got to me. The vessel that brought his body back to Earth was thrown into an orbit where it would re-enter the atmosphere and burn up “never again to be used for a lesser purpose.”
To say nothing of Diana in the same novel! Death is a significant theme of The Hundred Days; I immediately thought of this book after reading the OP. The grief that Jack and Stephen both experience and their very different ways of coping establish O’Brian once again as a master of his craft. Re-reading most books of the Aubrey-Maturin cycle is a pleasure akin to visiting an old friend, but opening this one comes with a cloud of trepidation.
On the bright side, no more Mrs Williams!
I am a fan of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise books, and for the longest time I couldn’t find a copy of the last book in the series-Cobra Trap. Finding it was bittersweet, for it contained the final Modesty Blaise/Willie Garvin adventure. Set about 15 years after the the previous adventure, they are off on a rescue when Modesty asks Willie to kiss her. In all the years they were together they were as close as any two people could be, but romance itself just never entered the picture. He hesitates, until she tells him that this is her last adventure because of a blood clot that would kill her soon. When it becomes apparent that they would have to separate, one to hold off the enemy and the other to complete the rescue, she stays behind and dies while in battle. Willie is able to get the innocent party to the border, but can’t make it himself. As he is running through the jungle, hit several times by bullets, the jungle slowly fades away and turns into a noonday summer’s field. His pain is forgotten as he sees a youthful Modesty waiting for him.
I sometimes wish I had never found that book.
Oh. God. Yes, that was amazing.
PoorYorick, that is a cardinal sin. I don’t know if I’d ever be able to forgive your dad. 
The death of Harold Lauder in the Stand, a pitiful suicide.
The death of The Outsider in Watchers