Donald E. Westlake

The prolific writer who was a master of mysteries

Donald E. Westlake

1933–2008

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Donald Westlake was so productive a mystery writer that he churned out more than 100 books under a variety of pen names, including Tucker Coe, Curt Clark, Samuel Holt, and Edwin West. “Publishers don’t like to publish more than one book a year by the same author,” he explained, “and I was writing faster than that.”

Westlake was a college dropout who served in the Air Force in the 1950s before publishing his first novel, The Mercenaries, in 1960, said the Los Angeles Times. “Critics said his early work showed a rigor and objectivity worthy of Dashiell Hammett.” Soon, pounding out up to six books annually on manual typewriters, Westlake developed a variety of characters and crime genres. Writing as Richard Stark, he composed “a dark, spare series about a one-named criminal called Parker.” Under his own name, “Westlake produced a series of books, comic in tone, about the criminal turns of John Dortmunder, whose efforts at organized crime are anything but organized.”

“With his penchant for twisty plots and witty dialogue, Westlake was a favorite in Hollywood,” said Entertainment Weekly. More than 15 of his books became movies, among them The Hot Rock (1970), with Robert Redford, and Bank Shot (1972), with George C. Scott. His first Parker book, The Hunter, “was adapted to the screen twice,” first as the 1967 thriller Point Blank and later as 1999’s Payback, starring Mel Gibson. Westlake wrote several screenplays himself, “picking up an Oscar nomination for director Stephen Frears’ 1990 film The Grifters, starring Anjelica Huston and John Cusack as mother-son baddies.”

Westlake won the Mystery Writers of America’s highest honor—designation as Grand Master. He recently completed another novel, Get Real, which is slated for release in April.