Oh boy, this one hurts. Westlake and I had several friends in common
and all of them spoke affectionately and respectfully of him,
always. His personality was as large, it seems, as the shadow from
his prose. Everyone else was in second place. I very much hoped to
meet him and add him to my series of interviews with crime writers
but we were never in the same place at the same time. A great
writer who may be my all-time favorite, who convinced me again of the
undying beauty of the novel and the mystery form. For many years
there's been no one who I'd seek out in the bookstores like
Westlake. A new Stark was an event for me. Just a great great
loss. I have so few heros left.
Death seems to have greeted him as a professional, swift and sudden,
without emotion or hesitation. A Westlake moment. Despite his
subjects, and the controlled mayhem of his characters. Westlake was a
writer of elegance and compassion. I was pleased last week because
I'd found a copy of his first novel. I was going to quote from
another of his books but I've pulled it out often enough that it
wasn't filed with its cousins, a book he did not claim but that I
returned to, on occasion, because it filled me with a great sense of
love and balance, a recognition that we are all in this same game
together. It consoled me and made some of life's challenges easier
to bear.
This is the life of a writer. You will touch the lives of those you
have never met. You will help them through their own private hells
and they will weep, someday, when you are gone.
I'll have to go and reread some of my favorite memories with the
guy. He left us so much.
David Laurence Wilson
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