Donald E. Westlake, Mystery Writer, Is Dead at 75

Donald E. Westlake, a prolific, award-winning mystery novelist who pounded out more than 100 books and 5 screenplays on manual typewriters during a career of nearly 50 years, died on Wednesday night. He was 75.

Mr. Westlake collapsed as he was headed to New Year’s Eve dinner while on vacation in Mexico, said his wife, Abigail Westlake.

The cause was a heart attack, she said.

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.

Mr. Westlake used different names in part to combat skepticism over his rapid rate of writing books, sometimes as many as four a year, his friends said.

“In the beginning, people didn’t want to publish more than one book a year by the same author,” said Susan Richman, his publicist at Grand Central Publishing.

Later in his career, Mr. Westlake limited himself to two pen names, each generally focusing on one primary character: He used his own name to write about an unintentionally comical criminal named John Dortmunder, and as Richard Stark wrote a series about an anti-hero and criminal named Parker.

Mr. Westlake occasionally wrote about other characters, such as Burke Devore, the downsized executive turned murderer in “The Ax,” whom The New York Times described in 1997 “as emblematic of his time as George F. Babbitt and Holden Caulfield and Capt. John Yossarian were of theirs.”

The full panoply of Mr. Westlake’s books was a spectacle to behold, his friends said. “We were in his library, this beautiful library surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of titles,” said Laurence Kirshbaum, his agent, “and I realized that every single book was written by Donald Westlake, English-language and foreign-language editions.”

Mr. Westlake’s cinematic style of storytelling, along with his carefully crafted plots and crisp dialogue, translated well on the screen. More than 15 of his books were made into movies. In addition, he wrote a number of screenplays, including “The Grifters,” which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1991.

Mr. Westlake wrote seven days a week, his friends said. His productiveness was honed in part by an era in which publishing houses churned out books at a relentless pace. During that time, he also wrote erotic literature, science fiction and westerns.

Mr. Westlake resisted computers and typed his manuscripts on manual typewriters. “They came in perfectly typed,” Mr. Kirshbaum said. “You felt like it was almost written by hand.”

Otto Penzler, a longtime friend of Mr. Westlake’s and the owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in TriBeCa, said, “He hated the idea of an electric typewriter because, he said, ‘I don’t want to sit there while I am thinking and have something hum at me.’ ”

Mr. Westlake kept four or five typewriters and cannibalized their parts when any one broke, as the typewriter model was no longer manufactured, his friends said.

“He lived in fear that he wouldn’t have his little portable typewriter,” said Mr. Penzler, who once gave him a similar typewriter that he had found in a secondhand store.

Donald Edwin Westlake was born to Lillian and Albert Westlake on July 12, 1933, in Brooklyn, and was raised in Yonkers and Albany. He attended colleges in New York, but did not graduate. He married Abigail Adams in 1979, and the couple settled in Gallatin, N.Y. He was previously married to Nedra Henderson and Sandra Kalb.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Westlake is survived by four sons, Sean Westlake, Steven Westlake, Paul Westlake and Tod Westlake; two stepdaughters, Adrienne Adams and Katherine Adams; a stepson, Patrick Adams; a sister, Virginia VanDermark; and four grandchildren.

Mr. Westlake was productive until his death. His next novel, “Get Real,” is scheduled for release in April.

Back from the dead
A university press resurrects some classic noir.

By Jonathan Messinger

Over the more than 40 years that Richard Stark has been writing his Parker noir novels, heavyweights have lined up to praise his work: Booker-winner John Banville called the books “among the most poised and polished fictions…of any time,” and Guggenheim fellow Luc Sante called them “a brilliant invention.” And yet, if you wanted to quantify how much these champions have done for their pet cause, neither of them would stack up to someone you’ve likely never heard of: Levi Stahl, publicity manager at the University of Chicago Press.

Donald Westlake—under the pseudonym of Richard Stark—began writing the Parker novels in 1962, with publication of The Hunter, a grisly and propulsive noir about a crook who seeks revenge after his partner-in-crime and his wife double cross him. Stahl, a rabid mystery fan, had read praise of the Parker novels but only recently decided to check them out.

“Last fall, I tried one,” he says. “They’re like candy. I read one, and suddenly I’m reading a dozen. I read all of the ones I could get my hands on, but the early ones were out of print and surprisingly hard to find.”

Stahl went to Maggie Hivnor, the press’s paperback-reprints editor, and suggested they get the books back into print. Hivnor then read a few and had the same reaction as Stahl, and the two of them took their enthusiasm to the press’s board. And now, a year later, University of Chicago Press has rereleased the first three Parker novels, The Hunter, The Man With the Getaway Face and The Outfit.

In The Hunter, Westlake introduces his antihero, Parker, a man so badass he doesn’t need a first name. A prodigiously strong and sharp criminal, Parker reacquaints himself with New York City after spending time in a California prison. Parker embarks on a vengeful path for Mal Resnick, the man who cut him out of his last job, either scaring or beating the daylights—or both—out of the Outfit’s worker bees in his way. Westlake immediately sets up the world of his novels as an amoral underground, where someone like Parker can be the reader’s rooting interest. But the moral vacuum occurs so naturally, no one seems to notice what’s missing. There’s also something oddly nostalgic about reading a ’60s novel involving payroll heists and easily forged driver’s licenses. Crime was so much more colorful before criminals had to have comp-sci degrees.

But The Hunter’s title sheds the most light on what Westlake is up to. Whereas most mysteries concern the victim, seeking justice or answers to what happened to “the hunted,” Westlake inverts that paradigm. Parker is both the bad guy and the good guy. In The Man with the Getaway Face, Parker undergoes surgery to change his face after the mob puts out a hit on him. And in The Outfit, as the title suggests, he takes on the syndicate, out-heisting them at every step.

“There’s something so wonderful about the efficiency with which he writes,” Hivnor says. “At one point, he describes an old bar in upstate New York, and he says, ‘It was called The Lido, but it shouldn’t have been.’ He doesn’t waste words.”

What’s most interesting, perhaps, is that the University of Chicago Press has resurrected these classics of the genre. Though most of the press’s front list is devoted to more academic titles, it’s able to use its paperback reprint list to diversify. Westlake is one of crime writing’s most revered practitioners, and yet his important—and popular—work had fallen out of print. We tried to talk to Hivnor about the role of a university press in serving the public good, acting on an archival instinct to keep the Parker novels on the shelves. But she was having none of it.

“To be honest, we’re doing them because they’re so fun,” she says, and echoes Stahl. “Once you read one, you want to read a dozen.”

The three Parker novels are out now. University of Chicago Press will reprint another three in the spring.