Donald E. Westlake's Books

Biography

Donald Edwin Westlake (1933 – 2008) was born in Brooklyn, brought up in Albany and spent most of his life living in and around New York City and New York State. He always wanted to be a writer and set himself the goal of publishing his first novel in his teens. Westlake didn’t quite achieve it. His first commercial work, Or Give Me Death, was published in Universe Science Fiction when he was twenty years old.

“I knew I was a writer when I was eleven; it took the rest of the world about ten years to begin to agree.” (Audible)

A Writing Obsession

Westlake was addicted to writing. He went on to publish well over 100 novels. Whilst best known for crime-fiction, he also wrote science-fiction, non-fiction and, early in his career, soft pornography — I guess it paid.

Unfortunately, his output outstripped demand. One publisher cautioned against being so prolific. The solution was simple, Westlake started to use different pen names.

“When you’re first in love, you want to do it all the time. I loved writing, and I was just pushing out too much stuff for a rational marketplace to contend with. I first started putting pen names on short stories because magazines wouldn’t publish the same byline twice in the same magazine.” (University of Chicago Press)

Pen Names and Pseudonyms

He went on to publish books under many pseudonyms. Most notably:

Richard Stark — creator of the amoral Parker novels.
Tucker Coe — who wrote about the guilt-ridden private eye, Mitch Tobin.
Donald E Westlake — comic author of the Dortmunder series and many standalone books.

But it didn’t stop there. Westlake had at least eighteen different aliases, including John B. Allen, who wrote a non-fiction account of the life of Elizabeth Taylor and Alan Marshall, who created the soft porn novels.

If that wasn’t confusing enough, Westlake then started to weave his pen names into his writing.

In one of his screenplays — The Grifters — a scene takes place in the offices of the firm Stark, Coe and Fellows. Westlake explained that he had written books as “Richard Stark, Tucker Coe and some other fellows”. In one of the Dortmunder series, the crooks plan a kidnapping based on a fictional Stark / Parker novel and in a Richard Stark novel, Parker gives the pseudonym John B. Allen.

Even his pen names were plays on words. He wrote one science-fiction novel under the name Curt Clark.

“Curt, of course, means short-tempered, and Clark is a variant in spelling and pronunciation of a word one of whose meanings is writer. Short-tempered writer.” (University of Chicago Press)

Finally, if you managed to keep up with that, as J Morgan Cunningham, he wrote Comfort Station. It had the endorsement “I wish I had written this book!” on its cover by Donald E Westlake.

Parker

As well as providing a smokescreen for publishers, his different pen names allowed him to write in very different ways. As Richard Stark, he used a dark, cold and unsentimental style to describe career criminal and antihero Parker. Quentin Tarantino cited the Parker novels as part of the inspiration for Reservoir Dogs.

The office women looked at him and shivered. They knew he was a bastard, they knew his big hands were born to slap with, they knew his face would never break into a smile when he looked at a woman. They knew what he was, they thanked God for their husbands, and still, they shivered. Because they knew how he would fall on a woman in the night. Like a tree.
Richard Stark, The Hunter

Dortmunder

As Donald E. Westlake, he wrote about another career criminal John Dortmunder, who was always destined for comic failure. The first Dortmunder novel, The Hot Rock, started life as a Parker novel, but a new character was born as it just “kept turning funny”.

“Well, you might not think it to look at me,” Dortmunder told him, “but I got a family crest.”
“Have you?”
“Yeah. And it’s got a motto on it.”
“I am anxious to hear this motto.”
“Quid lucrum istic mihi est.”
Mr. Hemlow squinted; the red-headed hawk in flight. “I’m afraid my Latin is insufficient for that.”
“What’s in it for me,” Dortmunder translated.
Donald E. Westlake, What’s So Funny?

Diverse Styles

It is hard to pigeonhole Donald E. Westlake’s books with a specific style. His writing is so varied.

“Stark and Westlake use language very differently. To some extent, they’re mirror images. Westlake is allusive, indirect, referential, a bit rococo. Stark strips his sentences down to the necessary information.” (New York Times)

In 1990, the Mystery Writers of America awarded Westlake the accolade of Grand Master. You should try more than one of his personas. You will only realise that they aren’t entirely different authors if you spot the in-jokes.