Another Donald Westlake Tribute

I can’t add much to what has already been said about Donald Westlake regarding his work or his death. Just to say that he wasn’t so much an institution as a hardboiled edifice that will last for a very long time. No one writes like him anymore. Likewise, few have dared to express the relationship between crime and the act of writing crime fiction, or at least done so as eloquently.


My Essential Donald Westlake

-Point Blank
-The Hook
-The Ax
-The Grifters (screenplay)


Westlake Bullet Points

-Smart effortless prose
-Subtly political
-Anarchic humor
-No wasted words
-By the late 1960s (Parker books) he had already updated the hardboiled novel
-Never succumed to self-parody