Donald Westlake: An Appreciation
I owe my discovery of Donald Westlake to three separate coincidences
that happened within a few weeks years ago – another reason why I
don't believe in coincidences. First, I found a beaten-up copy of
Slayground, a relentless Parker novel, a hardboiled novel unlike any
other I had read before. Second, I found a copy of The Hot Rock, which
informed me that there was a P.G. Wodehouse in crime fiction and that
his name was Donald Westlake. The third one was a used volume by one
Tucker Coe, the novel _A Jade in Aries_, which I found both magnetic
and devoid of Chandler-Hammett-Macdonald schtick. It didn't take me
long to find out that all three authors were one and the same, which
surprised me and made me wonder for a moment if this were not an
industrial operation. If so, it was the highest quality operation the
literary-industrial complex had ever produced.
Later, as I started catching up with the Dortmunder and Parker series,
the latter not always easy to find, and with the new books that
Westlake kept publishing with amazing consistency and regularity. I
started connecting the styles and to see the literary carpentry that
made Westlake's books both absorbing and enduring. Pick up any
Westlake book and you can be assured it's rereadable, just like
Wodehouse, Chandler and Ring Lardner are rereadable. I started to
realize that this genre writer (I should say "multigenre" writer) was
on a par with the greatest authors in crime fiction. I then tried to
fill all the gaps in my Westlake collection, which is close to
complete – and not a single book has failed to be reread!
Who can forget Westlake? From Parker's long-running series, likely the
best hardboiled series ever published, to his late realist noir
masterpieces _The Ax_ and _The Hook_, from Levin (too little
remembered) to Mitch Tobin, to his excursions into science fiction and
various hybrid experiments? Who can forget the adventures of _The Busy
Body+, a masterpiece that combines real adventure with dry humor
running through it but never breaking the spell?
Taken as a whole, the work of Donald Westlake is second to none in the
annals of crime fiction. His breadth is unmatched, his style rings
true regardless of setting, and his sense of humor and demonstrated
intimate knowledge of human nature is a gift that future generations
of readers will rediscover once and again. We have lost a contemporary
classic of American literature.
Mario Taboada – Rara-Avis
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 02 Jan 2009 EST