Donald Westlake (and Richard Stark, etc.) RIP

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-westlake2-2009jan02,0,2902199.story

Helluva good run, though.

too bad. i got the reissues of the first three or four Parker novels for jewish xmas.

Story I heard is there's still a couple Dortmunders waiting to get published.

RIP. I liked the story about him and the typewriters.

Wow. Unmentioned in the LAT story, but comics artist Darwyn Cooke is adapting the Parker books in a series of four graphic novels starting this summer. Too bad he won't be around to see his work reach new audiences that way.

Those should be great - I've been anticipating them since they were announced (Cooke has previously introduced a hard-ass aging professional criminal named 'Stark' into Catwoman's supporting cast.)

i was inexplicably drawn to all things crime related when i was about 12 or 13 and westlakes comic capers and awry sitches left me always wanting more..they r makin a movie out of his ugandan coffee caper book...he was in my area alot but i never went to tell him thnaks...so thankssssssssssssssssssssss donald e..i loved yur tales

a friend of mine stayed at his greenwich village apartment for a summer. the guy had a massive collection of playboys so i had him down as a slight perv but "leafing through them" i noticed each one had a story by him in it!

he was one of my heroes when i was a kid. i met him when i was around 11 and he looked less than amused to have such a young fan for some reason. all i could think of to ask him - after he signed some books for me - was "so, are you writing anything right now?". he looked at me like i was crazy and said "um, i'm a writer, i'm always writing". then he laughed dismissively and everyone around us laughed and i wanted to crawl into a hole and slit my wrists. traumatized me for years.

That's what it's always like when you're a kid and you meet a writer.

Well, that's what it was like for me when I met Isaac Asimov. Frederik Pohl was nice though.

i know i link to this blog all the time, but ethan iverson did a tribute & annotated list of all of westlake's fiction:

http://thebadplus.typepad.com/dothemath/2009/01/donald-e-westlake-1933-2008.html

Jordan, have you read this yet?

ha, yeah. he should be credited with blog & piano on the albums.

I'll be seeing Made in USA tonight.

MADE IN USA is poss the least faithful adaptation ever made, as well as being the weakest karina-godard collab

Pretty much thoroughly digested the two Parker adaptations by Darwyn Cooke for an essay/review/whatever I wrote and find myself hungry for more.

I presume it's wise to begin with straight up with The Hunter? Does anyone have any other recommendations?

I followed them in order actually. They're all good. As are all the Dortmunder series.

What Alex said.

Okey dokey, y'all!

Get your Twitter fix:

https://twitter.com/_RichardStark_

Westlake was my schoolbus reading all through high school.

Just started reading this guy's stuff, really loving it.

"The penitentiary's there, a high long wall next to the sidewalk along the street. The sidewalk's cracked and frost-heaved over there. On the other side, it's cleaner and there's a half a dozen bars with neon signs that say Budweiser and Gennesee. National and local beers on tap. Bill had Budweiser and I had Gennesee. It tasted like beer."

in the last nine months i have read, uh, lemme count...
the hunter
the jugger
backflash
somebody owes me money
the score
361
lemons never lie
the damsel

and reading memory now... have a few more laying around i've picked up cheap. i got "get real" for a buck last week and started it but the premise seemed too silly!

i will read all of these.
if anyone has spare copies i will buy them from you. totally my favorite guy to read lately.

i am kinda just reading them as i come across them used, not wanting to buy the expensive/kinda ugly new editions for cover price.

how are the novels he wrote as Tucker Coe?

scott's story still kills me.

it is pretty sad :I(

Memory is neat. Has a few plot loopholes, I thought, but the whole vibe is noir-ish and hopeless. I just read The Busy Body, kinda slight but amusing.

Get Real is super-light but fun

does any recc. a place to start with the dortmunders? i've tried a couple but the feel didn't seem right. i should just persevere, because i luv westlake so much, but i am open to ideas of a starting place. also, favorites of the non-series novels? so far only read 361 & somebody owes me money; memory too now but i just started.

James Blue: One-shot pseudonym, used as a third name circa 1959 when both Westlake and Stark already had stories in a magazine issue. In actuality, the name of Westlake's cat.[7]

read two of the four sam holt novels last month. they are fun but not as gripping as the parker stuff.

still want to read the tucker coe novels.

also, ordered the cutie from amazon.

Loving this guy right now. In the last few weeks I've gone through The Sour Lemon Score, The Black Ice Score, The Damsel, The Comedy is Finished, and The Hook.

The Hook is a great one. It's definitely a companion to The Ax. Themes of guilt, temptation, and murder, with some implied allusions to Crimes and Punishment and Macbeth.

Nothing else I've read so far tops Slayground.

pretty sure i have the hook in my to read pile. maybe that will be next. they're such quick reads.

i almost ordered 'the comedy is finished' when i ordered the cutie, but was put off my lukewarm/negative reviews -- what did you think?

i have not read slayground yet. in fact i am only about halfway thru the parkers. but i don't want to read them all in a row, i am savoring them like a fine case of beer.

I enjoyed The Comedy is Finished. I enjoy all of his books. There are some soap-operatic developments, but they didn't bother me. And it has an interesting milieu, Hollywood in the mid-1970s, a bunch of characters each undergoing his or her separate 60s hangover.

Updating Jordan's Bad Plus blog link above, great writeup: http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/a-storyteller-that-got-the-details-right.html

New Parker movie out in a bit based on Flashfire ... not sure how I feel about this, I'm going to reserve judgement

Started out loving the Cooke comic adaptations, but now I'm really noticing how much gets cut from the original. By The Score I'm about to leave the adaptation train

thanks for that link. i'll have to track down more of his non-pseudonym stuff.

has anyone read his sleaze/sex stuff? does it retain any kind of hardboiled edge or is it all just the kinda boring tease of most of that genre? is the writing on par with his usual precise elegance?

does any recc. a place to start with the dortmunders? i've tried a couple but the feel didn't seem right. i should just persevere, because i luv westlake so much, but i am open to ideas of a starting place. also, favorites of the non-series novels? so far only read 361 & somebody owes me money; memory too now but i just started.

hi ian i've never been that big on the dortmunder series, either, seem a lil bit formulaic to me. i wld say that the first cpl are the best, so maybe they are to be read in order.

of the non-series novels i really like help i am being held prisoner tho i concede that a lot of the humour derives from the fact that the lead character is called Mr Kunt

i just got all the parker novels for my ereader and i have to say i love it. read the mourner and the score last night to help me through my insomnia, will probably start on the jugger soon. i'm reading them in order, and while i feel like there's always a mention here or there of the previous book or two, it's not really necessary to do so right ?

there's a little bit more continuity as the series progresses

ah ok good to know, thanks

i read all of the parkers this year (all i could find)

just the best. the best.

i didn't know he died though :( i was kinda waiting for the next one

a friend of mine stayed at his greenwich village apartment for a summer. the guy had a massive collection of playboys so i had him down as a slight perv but "leafing through them" i noticed each one had a story by him in it!

― Tracer Hand, Friday, January 2, 2009 12:45 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is so great

i'm really enjoying this, especially since reading one of the parkers is quick. i'm basically reading one a day. i like how parker is supposed to be this really careful professional who never takes a job if there's a risk of anything not working out yet every time something/someone does fuck up. and then parker has to clean up that shit.

the parker stuff is incredible imo. this guy is one of the best and still v underrated imo.
reading "The Ax" now and it's riveting.

i also recently read The Cutie and loved it.

there's a little bit more continuity as the series progresses

Yes, I think each of the last 4 (or 5?) books each begins about 1 second after the previous one ends (though each tells a complete story).

i'm still going through them and it's hard to pace myself so i don't finish them in a day, but yeah there is a sense of continuity, every book more or less starts with a quick recap of the previous ones. and it's nice to see characters from previous books showing up again. for example i just finished plunder squad and it was nice to see stan devers appear after we saw him get his start in the criminal world previously. and i do like grofield working with parker every once in a while.
i watched the statham parker trailer and seriously it's hilarious. especially the way his accent is all over the place.

i made the terrible decision to start butcher's moon late last night. i thought i'd read just a few pages or the entire thing if i felt like it, only then did i realise that this one was twice as long as any other parker novel. add to that the fact that it was, yet again, a very thrilling book, and i finished at 4 or 5 am. that ending where parker calls up people he's worked with (and whom we've read about in previous novels - love to see some of those characters back) to just full-on wreck the lives of the folks that fucked with him and grofield is just insane. also, while parker keeps saying that he'd never take care of a guy he's working with and that he's not friends with any of them, this is the second time he's saved grofield (first being when grofield got shot on the cockaigne island and then walked around losing his blood in mexico). he does admit in this one that the situation is a bit different as the tyler outfit deserved what's coming to them as soon as they cut grofield's finger. still, butcher's moon and slayground (the one that paves the way for butcher's moon) make for a fantastic read.

flashfire does not end like this iirc. it's the one where they rob jewels from a very rich dude in palm beach? if that's the case, istr it ending with the group of guys who ripped him off getting killed by him or arrested and he gets away scot free, with the sheriff helping him even though he knows something is off. and the real estate chick who helped him gets some money too?

yeah, that's how it ends. then the filmmakers tacked on a weird epilogue of parker doing two things very much out of character.

why the hell did they feel the need to tack on that mob thing. for a sequel? did they link it in any way to the story the'd just told?

supposedly it was this mob boss who was the fence for bad guys' to sell the jewelry to, and he hipped them to the auction in palm beach. why he couldn't supply the setup money for the caper is beyond me. then i guess they'd not have much of a story, if they could just let parker keep his loot.

i for one would have enjoyed seeing that. maybe. parker gets his cut, doesn't go to palm beach and we just see him hanging around with claire, fishing in the lake, stashing money in the surrounding houses, maybe going for a quick weekend to ny or to chill for two weeks in miami.

is there way for me to flip thru old playboys in search of westlake stories without looking like a total crepe?

wear a suit

hmmm not gonna work

http://www.tumblr.com/blog/murderjones

i wrote a thing about the movie for my 'new blog.'

awes :)

ian, can you do a ranking of westlake novels? the b00kst0re downstairs has a bunch of mass market paperbacks of his in stock, thinking of snatching a couple on the way out the door tonight.

b00kst0re

p@perb@ck$

m4ss m4rk3t p4p3rb4cks

14n

th1nk1ng 0f sn4tch1ng

anyway get any richard starks they have

they have z3r0 starks unfortch, which is a little odd

Infographic:

http://parkerseries.uchicago.edu/

There's a book of Westlake odds and ends coming out this year. Here's a post about it by its editor, Levi Stahl, including a table of contents: http://ivebeenreadinglately.blogspot.no/2014/03/did-i-mention-that-im-editing-donald-e.html

The Stark books have been — by far — the greatest success I've had in my explorations of crime fiction in recent years. Only read up to The Handle so far and figure I'll read the Grofield ones in their chronological place, so I guess The Damsel will be next.

dope

The Grofields are great. I think it was Lemons Never Lie that struck me as up there with the best Parkers (Slayground, Butcher's Moon).

yeah it's amazing—and twists quite dark iirc

oh hey you guys if you want to see a pretty great westlake film adaptation, don't miss "the outfit" w/ robert duvall. it's on warner archive I think.

i'm in the middle of lemons right now, no spoilers

don't you want to know if they lie or not?

maddening that the Grofields aren't available on Kindle or w/e, could only slot Lemons into my ongoing chronological Stark readthrough

Good piece

https://crimereads.com/what-i-learned-from-donald-e-westlakes-letters/

YOU GUYS

shane black & rdj collaborating on Parker adaptation :D

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/robert-downey-jr-shane-black-parker-1235194886/

It's weird, doing a good Parker film adaptation doesn't seem that difficult, but nobody has yet come close to capturing the tone/feel of the books (Boorman's Point Blank is cool but not very Starkesque). Darwin Cooke's Parker comics are much more effective, in part because they stay tight to the texts and treat the books as period pieces - I don't think a 'modern day' Parker really works because the mechanics/politics of crime are entirely different now.

So I'm not really enthusiastic about this new announcement - Downey isn't really my idea of Parker, he's not monolithic enough, and the actor's strength - wit, speed, flash - are inimical to the character.

Still, anything that keeps Westlake's work in the public consciousness is cool by me.

Trying to think of an actor who could do a good Parker and I'm kinda drawing a blank. Maybe Frank Grillo? Michael Rooker could have done it years ago, but he's in his sixties now...

i will always remember him as the co-creator of the tv series "supertrain"

Michael Rooker could have done it years ago, but he's in his sixties now... Maybe because I started with the last one, Dirty Money(no finale sense, just another speedy caper, appropriately enough, since he lives for the crisis euphoria, more than the score, which is just refuel between capers), but there he's seen by another character as generic geezer w beautiful gf; she could do so much better (she's pretty retro, the only stock-static character, just so obliging). Think I've read that the timeline might have been adjusted, but at some point there was something about military, even wartime, experience waaay back there, so maybe he's front-loaded for special ops.
If Odenkirk played his own age (now 59), maybe that would work, or Cranston, hell yes.

parker is supposed to be huge, and rdj is tiny, even by actor standards

officially he’s 5’8” which means he’s probably 5’6”

Jack Palance would have made a good Parker.

Westlake thought so too.

Westlake: Usually I don’t put an actor’s face to the character, though with Parker, in the early days, I did think he probably looked something like Jack Palance. That may be partly because you knew Palance wasn’t faking it, and Parker wasn’t faking it either. Never once have I caught him winking at the reader.

https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/westlake_interview.html

rdj is tiny, even by actor standards Who's rdj? Odenkirk seems pretty small, guess some would be annoyed w that, like Cruise as Reacher (although part of that may be that Cruise is annoying anyway, I say). (But he's also good as Reacher in that he has to reach for things, cos short geddit)

No, should be bigger, like Cranston or Jonathan Banks.

Interesting, didn't know about the Palance-Parker-Westlake connection. Did know about the Palance-Darkseid-Kirby connection:

https://www.newsfromme.com/2006/11/10/the-palance-darkseid-connection/

rdj is tiny, even by actor standards Who's rdj?

― dow

robert downey jr cares because you do

Matt Smith (former Dr. Who) bulked up a little for House of the Dragon and probably has the right face.

ian, can you do a ranking of westlake novels? the b00kst0re downstairs has a bunch of mass market paperbacks of his in stock, thinking of snatching a couple on the way out the door tonight.

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Monday, 19 August 2013 21:44 (nine years ago) link

I am only 9 years late to this question (lol sorry) but here are some things i like a lot --

Favorite Parker novels in no particular order: The Rare Coin Score, The Hunter/The Man With The Getaway Face/The Outfit (these first three are fantastic and sort of contain the initial plotline so are best read as a piece imo), The Sour Lemon Score, The 7th. Honestly they are all worth reading and if you like one you'll probably like them all. Some people think the later ones aren't as good, but I like them just fine. I remember Ask The Parrot being good particularly?

I haven't read AS many of the Dortmunder novels, but I really love The Hot Rock and Jimmy the Kid.

Non-series novels: The Ax (maybe my favorite of his non-comedic standalone novels; this could make a good film but i don't trust anyone in hollywod to make a good film these days), 361, Memory (not really a crime novel but easily available and worth reading), Brother's Keeper, The Fugitive Pigeon (is it mere coincidence the main character is named Charlie Poole? Westlake was friends with Larry Block who was involved to some degree in the village folk scene & knew Dave Van Ronk, so Westlake being aware of Poole the musician is not entirely out of bounds? i like to think it's intentional).... hmm.

The only thing I would not recommend, really, that you might see in a store these days is Castle In The Air; just didn't work for me. Might have made a good film but as a novel it was too jumpy and kinda scattershot.
But I haven't read the "James Bond one", or the comedian one that HCC have published fairly recently.

I guess I did not really like the books he wrote as Samuel Holt - I read one and didn't get through a second. I do like the couple of the books he wrote as Tucker Coe, though, though I've only read a few of them.

Maybe more thoughts later. (shrug emoji here)

The Ax is already a (French) film, quite good too.

I saw Payback before Point Blank or reading any of the novels, it's hard to not visualize Parker as Mel Gibson because of that.

grey-haired current Gibson would be a decent reunion-era Parker tbh

(putting aside questions of whether he should be employed) (he shouldn’t)

I read Butcher's Moon last night. Holy shit, that is a hard book. Really great stuff.

Holt McCallany might make a good Parker

YES!

I'm reading Brother's Keeper right now and it's great. Plot: a group of monks find out their Park Avenue monastery is being sold out from under them and will be torn down to make way for a new building. They begin plotting to stop the demolition. It's really a novel that's just as much about a crisis of faith our protagonist is having, especially due to a woman he meets who may be able to help them. It's almost like Dortmunder's crew, but monks. It's deeply hilarious a lot of the time.