Friday, January 02, 2009

R.I.P. Donald E. Westlake

Official Website: http://www.donaldwestlake.com/wks_bkex5.html
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_E._Westlake

Donald Westlake has died of an apparent heart attack while en route to a New Year's Eve party while vacationing in Mexico.

He had many pseudonyms. It is said he used pseudonyms because publishers didn't believe he could write so much so quickly. Also, it was uncommon for houses to publish more than one book a year from any given author. Not to mention some racy titles published by Monarch books.
See his Wikipedia page for a list of pseudonyms.

See the bibliography section of his website for a list of his works, also available on the Wiki.

Many of his stories were made into movies (IMDb).

The Hardcase Crime series has published a Richard Stark novel, "Lemons Never Lie" and two Donald Westlake novels "Somebody Owes Me Money" and "361".

Awards:
Earned the Mystery Writers of America "Grand Master" title in 1993, has won three Edgar Awards, and received an Academy Award nomination for "The Grifters" in 1991.

Random House published Westlake's first novel, "The Mercenaries", in 1960.

Trivia:
Wrote more than 90 books, most of them on a typewriter.
Photos of typewriter keys are used to spell out his name in his web page banner.

This is a link to some Science Fiction short stories, at least the first of which was published in Playboy magazine:
http://www.donaldwestlake.com/wks_ss6_intro.html

Donald E. Westlake on Amazon.com

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