Obituary: Donald E Westlake

Jan 7 2009 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

HE WAS the writer as a rebel, a man of the mean streets, coat collar raised, whose words spurted like bullets from one of his two ancient typewriters – sometimes bloody, other times funny, always crisp.

He saw no advantage in the electric typewriter, once favoured by modernists, and, as for the computer – well, he would sooner have been stiff in a box than use one of those. “I don’t want to sit there while I am thinking and have something hum at me,” he said.

Like Raymond Chandler, Donald Edwin Westlake was the master of simile, metaphor and wisecrack. His own favourite line came from his sociopathic anti-hero, Parker, who expresses irritation to a man who has brought him a message. “I'm only the messenger,” he complains. Parker shoots him and replies, “Now you're the message”.

Although belonging to the “hard-boiled” tradition, Westlake was distinguished by his intentional humour. He also wrote in a visual style, allowing his novels to translate into movies. His great early success was with The Hunter, a box-office smash as Point Blank (1967) with Lee Marvin. Others included The Hot Rock (1972) with Robert Redford; The Outfit with Robert Duvall (1973); Bank Shot (1974) with George C Scott; Payback (1999), a second interpretation of The Hunter, Parker’s debut, starring Mel Gibson; and What's the Worst That Could Happen? (2001) with Martin Lawrence.

Westlake enjoyed success as a screenwriter, particularly with The Grifters (1990), a bleak view of the sick American underbelly, which was nominated for an Academy award and based on a Jim Thompson novel.

Under his own name, Westlake wrote of the hapless criminal John Dortmunder. In the 1960s, Westlake turned out 35 novels. Publishers then didn’t like to release more than one novel a year from the same writer. Westlake bypassed that problem with pseudonyms, such as Richard Stark (for Parker), Tucker Coe, Edwin West, and Timothy J Culver.

In 1993, he was the Grand Master of America’s Mystery Writers.

Westlake, thrice married with four sons, was born into an Irish family in Brooklyn, but raised in Yonkers and Albany.

Donald E Westlake, writer; born July 12, 1933, died December 31, 2008.