The Spy Who Wasn’t There

Sometime in 2012, Charles Ardai, writer, editor, entrepreneur and co-founder of Hard Case Crime, was chatting with Abby Westlake when an unpublished manuscript came up in their conversation. It was called Fall of the City and it was loosely based on a treatment Donald Westlake had written under contract with Eon Productions/United Artists for James Bond film #18, which would Read More …

The Sun Rises Under an English Heaven

Donald Westlake wrote numerous short non-fiction articles on a variety of subjects. He also gave talks and interviews, wrote letters and reviews and generally comported himself in the non-fiction universe with the same apparent ease as his ability to produce works of fiction. Yet there are only three non-fiction books credited to him in the bibliography. One is a biography Read More …

The Writer’s Writer’s Writer

I read this fantastic tribute to Donald Westlake’s work when it was published more than a year ago with every intention of publishing an excerpt and a link on this website, but then a whole lot of other somethings got in the way and whatever I had planned to do here vanished like an indy film producer on payday. Having Read More …

Crime Scenes: Donald Westlake on Film

Seven-film series features screen adaptations of the hard-boiled crime writer’s work Special event on Friday, May 12: Abby Westlake and Luc Sante in conversation with program curator Levi Stahl Museum of the Moving Image, May 12–14, 2017 Astoria, Queens, NY, (April 10, 2017)—Donald E. Westlake published nearly a hundred novels under various pseudonyms during his half-century career, the most influential Read More …

Westlake-Leonard Panel at the FIRN

The comedic writing of Donald Westlake and Elmore Leonard will be the focus of one of several roundtables at the 2016 Festival International du Roman Noir (FIRN) [International Festival of the Noir Novel]. The roundtable, Masters of laughter: Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake, will be hosted by Michel Abescat, respected Editor-in-Chief of the French culture and TV magazine Télérama. The panel will include: Abby Westlake, author, Read More …

Darwyn Cooke Remembered

Many articles about Darwyn Cooke have appeared since his untimely passing ten days ago. Below are excerpts and links to some of the best, with a slight bias for mentions of his work on the Parker graphic novels. If you doubt the impact Darwyn had on fans, colleagues, friends and the comics industry as a whole, read on. George Gene Gustines Read More …

Mourning a Good Friend

Darwyn Cooke, the highly regarded award-winning graphic artist who brought Parker to a whole new generation of fans, passed away on Saturday in the early morning. He had been battling an aggressive form of lung cancer. On Friday, his wife, Marsha, posted the following message on Darwyn’s blog: It is with tremendous sadness that we announce Darwyn is now receiving Read More …

Additions, Fictitious and Otherwise

It has taken several months to plow through all the material for the most recent page updates, mainly due to the addition of the most recent, and probably last, of Don’s grandchildren (right). But also because it’s just a lot of material. There are still several non-fiction works to curate and transcribe, which will be forthcoming in the next update, Read More …

Happy 82nd Birthday

Unbeknownst to everyone at the time, the birth of Donald Westlake–82 years ago today–would eventually result in the immaculate conception of more than a dozen other personalities all living within the same man. The best known of these, of course, is Richard Stark, creator of the Parker series. Tucker Coe took up residence a couple decades later and told five Read More …

New and Updated Pages

The Getaway Car headlines the 54 new pages that have been added to the site. The other 53 cover short fiction and short non-fiction gathered from the original periodicals found in the Westlake library. Nine of the short non-fiction pages include the full piece, reproduced as large images from the original publications, most of which were not reprinted in The Read More …

Praise for The Getaway Car

It took a while for The Mysterious Bookshop to post the video and even longer for me to put it up here but below is, at last, the video of Levi Stahl, Lawrence Block, and Abby Westlake–introduced by longtime friend, publisher and bookstore owner, Otto Penzler–as they mark the release of The Getaway Car: A Donald Westlake Nonfiction Miscellany at Read More …

New Book: The Getaway Car

I didn’t fully appreciate Donald Westlake’s career until adulthood. For as long as I can remember, my father was the guy on the other side of a closed door making a manual Smith-Corona sound like a machine gun with the hiccups. So I knew he was a professional writer, as additionally evidenced by the signed copy of his latest book Read More …

New Year Message and Updates

New Year’s Eve marked five years of life on Earth sans the creative genius and ebullient personality of Donald Edwin Westlake, etc, etc. I have not and will not make a practice of recognizing that date in publishing and personal infamy on this site, which, in itself, stands as a daily tribute to his memory. Instead, I will tend to Read More …

Darwyn Does it Again

Don had long maintained that he would not allow the name “Parker” to be used in a film unless the filmmakers agreed to produce a series instead of another one-off. The producers of the recent Jason Statham film, Parker, did just that and thus were allowed to use the name. But they weren’t the first production team working in a Read More …

Sortable Bibliography Sneak Peek

With 164 separate entries in the new master bibliography so far, we’re still only up to 1967. Ultimately, this table will become a comprehensive list of everything ever published under the name of Donald E. Westlake or one of his many pseudonyms. The current bibliography, listing novels, shorts, fiction, non-fiction and pseudonyms in separate tables, will not be replaced. It Read More …