On December 31, 2008, while vacationing in Mexico on his way to dinner, author Donald E. Westlake collapsed and suffered a heart attack. He died a short time later. I had planned on doing a blog entry about Westlake’s most famous fictional character, Parker, later this year, but just having learned about this tragic event this morning, I decided to put aside what I was going to enter on this site and devote some time to one of my favorite authors.
Donald Edwin Westlake was born on July 12, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York. He grew up and attended a number of schools in the NYC area and Albany NY before graduating from high school in 1951. He would attend three different colleges in upstate New York and never earn a degree, although he received an honorary doctorate from SUNY in 1996. After a two-year stint in the US Air Force, he gravitated to writing, and found he loved it so much, he wanted to make it his career.
The column from the January 1, 2009 New York Times adds:
“Mr. Westlake, considered one of the most successful and versatile mystery writers in the United States, received an Academy Award nomination for a screenplay, three Edgar Awards and the title of Grand Master from the Mystery Writers of America in 1993. Since his first novel, “The Mercenaries,” was published by Random House in 1960, Mr. Westlake had written under his own name and several pseudonyms, including Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Samuel Holt and Edwin West. Despite the diversity of pen names, most of his books shared one feature: They were set in New York City, where he was born.”
I truly learned of Donald Westlake through his pseudonym of Richard Stark and the fictional career criminal Parker. I had seen the film “Point Blank” with Lee Marvin in the role of Walker, a kind of combination of a foreign film shot in San Francisco and last homage to film noir in the late 1960’s. When the film "Payback” starring Mel Gibson in the roll of Porter was released, I became further fascinated with this anti-hero and so I eventually found a copy of the first book, “The Hunter”, and read it as it was originally meant to be read: in a very brief period.
Following “The Hunter” was a series of paperback crime thrillers featuring Parker (no first name): always trying to bring down a big score but consistently being thwarted by partners who were either too greedy or too inept for the job to go as planned. The writing was sparse: no adverbs. Westlake/Stark kept things terse and to the point. Parker himself is a man of few words. He dislikes conversations but puts up with them if it will help get to the point of bringing down a big robbery. Parker is really not so much an anti-hero as a complete non-hero. He actually has very few redeeming qualities. Parker is good at what he does. He is efficient. He is knowledgeable (about crime). He is trustworthy as far as expecting only his fair share and not out to double-cross anyone. He is good at killing someone with a gun or his own bare hands. Other than those traits, that about does it for our ‘hero’. Parker is not a homicidal maniac, but he will not think twice about killing anyone if the situation calls for it. He’s the muscle. He’s the ruthless thug. Nobody is killed needlessly, but if you get in the way of him and his money, you’d better be able to disappear in a second. Oddly enough, these traits are what makes the character so fascinating and makes me want to go back and read more!
Westlake wrote over a hundred books in his lifetime … and he did it all on manual typewriters, not even an electric IBM! The genres he covered ranged from what we would today probably call soft-core porn/hard romance (as Sheldon Lord) to humor (J. Morgan Cunningham) to science fiction; all with different pseudonyms. However, the work for which he received such notoriety came from crime novels, often with humor added. The Parker novels were exceptions to the added humor element. His final novel, “Get Real”, is supposed to be released in April 2009.
He wrote five screenplays and received an Academy Award nomination for “The Grifters”, adapted from a novel by Jim Thompson, another great writer whose work I have enjoyed. Noted sci-fi author Dan Simmons paid tribute to Westlake/Stark with his character Joe Kurtz in three hard-boiled crime stories. Writers like Elmore Leonard owe Westlake a debt of gratitude for being a co-conspirator and helping to pave the way for the modern crime novel. For that matter, we all owe Mr. Westlake a big ‘thank you’ for his providing us with such reading pleasure.
So long, Donald Westlake. I was looking forward to spending a lot more nights with you and our favorite criminal.
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