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Charles Ardai, writer, editor, entrepreneur and co-founder of Hard Case Crime, was chatting with Abby Westlake when an unpublished manuscript came up in their conversation.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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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’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 …
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 …
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 …
The chronological trove of published novels and collections isn’t the only treasure in Don’s personal library. There are also several storage bins of periodicals containing Don’s published short stories, articles, essays and even a poem! This is a mountain of work that needs to be tackled if the DEW bibliography is ever going to be complete. The work has begun Read More …
Don’s seventh grandchild After a hiatus as I moved my family from Brooklyn to the Hudson Valley and witnessed the birth of my “way above average cute” daughter (according to a third party, honest!), I’m busily trying catch up on the latest DEW-related news and updating this website as quickly as possible. On to the report. New eBooks from our Read More …
After a bit of a hiatus, the work on rebuilding Don’s bibliography continues. I’m building a spreadsheet that will become the sortable master list for every edition in Don’s personal library. Look for a sneak peek next week. In the meantime, below is a list of book pages with new images from the many editions in the library. Some are Read More …
Opening weekend has come and gone and the results are in. “Parker” came in 5th overall at the box office with a $7 million take over three days in more than 2,000 theaters nationwide. One of my pet peeves with the stenographic nature of American journalism is the fixation on opening weekend box office results. The only people who really Read More …
Propelled by what is probably the most aggressive and persuasive marketing campaign for any of the movies based on the Richard Stark novels, Parker, from the book, Flashfire, starts its theatrical run tomorrow. And I really can’t say enough about the marketing campaign, which has landed in my living room more times than I can count. Almost every person I Read More …
