7/12/1933 Westlake busts in

July 12, 1933.  On this date comic mayhem gained one of its greatest advocates. Donald E. Westlake was born.  He may be the only author bestknown for parodying himself.  His books about the talented but luckless burglar John Dortmunder seem like a funhouse mirror held to the deadly serious books he wrote, under the name Richard Stark about the ruthless thief Parker.

Many of his books were made into movies, and he was nominated for an Oscar for his script of The Grifters, based on a Jim Thompson novel.  The MWA gave him several Edgars and named him a grandmaster.

I once had the honor of sitting with him at a luncheon.  All I had to  do was sneak into the dining room and rearrange the table cards.  Dortmunder and Parker would have been proud.

12/31/2008 Donald E. Westlake dies

December 31, 2008.  Donald E. Westlake died in Mexico after a New Year's Eve dinner with his wife.  Westlake was an MWA Grand Master, and one of only three people to win the Edgar Award in three different categories.  He is the only author I know of who achieved his greatest fame by self-parody: his comic classics about thief John Dortmunder were a funhouse mirror reflection of the grim books about thief Parker, which he wrote under the name Richard Stark.

I once attended a conference where he was speaking and snuck into the dining room to rearrange place cards so I could sit at his table.  Dortmunder would have  approved. 

2/26/1962 Donald E. Westlake's 87th Precinct?

February 26, 1962.  This is a complicated story, so bear with me. 

In  1959 Donald E. Westlake started writing a series of stories about Abe Levine, a New York police detective.  What made these stories unusual was that Levine was afraid that he had a heart condition that might kill him, and each of his cases was colored and shaped by his own dance with mortality.

(My first encounter with Westlake, by the way, was as a teenager when I read "Come Back, Come Back," the second Levine story, in a Hitchcock anthology.  It knocked my socks off.)

But the third story was called "The Feel of the Trigger," and Westlake (in his introduction to the book Levine)  said it "probably showed at its peak the influence of Evan Hunter on my development as a writer."  He had been reading the 87th Precinct books which Hunter had recently started writing under the name Ed McBain. 

And speaking of which, there was at the time a TV series based on those same books, and "The Feel of the Trigger" was purchased to serve as the basis of an episode of the same name on 87th Precinct, which was shown February 26, 1962. 

"Unfortunately, I couldn't be home that night," Westlake explained, "but a friend offered to tape the program for me.  Remember, we're talking about 1962, not 1982, and the tape he was talking about was sound.  He did record the program, and some time later I heard it, and my memory of it is a lot of footsteps and several doors being opened.  Some day I'd like to see that show." 

You can buy the whole series on DVD now.