Re: RARA-AVIS: Westlake pseudonyms

MT (matrxtech@sprintmail.com)
Thu, 17 Sep 1998 10:58:48 -0500 Mark:

<<Mario,
What are Westlake's Levine stories and what "delightful volume" have
they been collected in? I don't think I'm familiar with those.>>

Abe Levine is a cop in Brooklyn. The volume in question is called
"Levine" (Mysterious Press, 1984), and contains the following
novelettes:

_The Best Friend Murder_ (1959)

_Come Back, Come Back_ (1960)

_The Feel of the Trigger_(1961)

_The Sound of Murder_ (1962)

_The Death of a Bum_ (1965)

_After I'm Gone_ (1984, a new one written especially for this volume)

The first five novelettes are from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

"In some ways, 1959 was for me a very good year....In 1959, fired with
youth and freshness and enthusiasm, I churned out more work than in any
other year of my life, and most of it found a market. When the dust had
settled, it turned out that I had produced over half a million published
words that year (we say nothing of the unpublished words) and had become
a freelance writer.
....

Among that year's output were forty-six short stories and novelettes, of
which twenty-seven were published. (That's about a third of all the
short stories I've written over my entire life so far.)
....

[Then Westlake goes on for several pages explaining how he conceived and
developed Abe Levine, and how he came to write a final story twenty
years later.]

I highly recommend this collection of short procedurals. Superb
characterization and atmosphere that rival Ed McBain.

Regards,

Mario Taboada
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