Thursday, January 1, 2009

Donald Westlake 1933-2009

Well shit, can't even make it one day without something terrible happening.

I love hardboiled fiction. Call it pulp, crime, noir, or whatever, I love them. As a result I loved Don Westlake. Westlake was simply one of the best. He wrote an ungodly amount of books, nobody really knows how many considering the number of pseudonyms the man used, most famously his Parker series which he wrote under the name Richard Stark, and his Dortmunder series which he wrote as Westlake. In between are about fifty kazillion paperbacks, screenplays, and God knows what else, all held together by the same lean propulsive style.

Westlake was simply put the man. A True Hardcase.

And he is sorely missed.

Pick up one of his books and then just try to put it down.