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This is a small collection of Donald E. Westlake's more well-known crime and science fiction short stories; as collected by Flyboy707.ABOUT THE AUTHORDonald E. Westlake was born on July 12, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York City,New York, USA.
Westlake, a former US Air Force pilot and one time actor, has become the
writer most associated with tales of organised crime. Indeed, in story after
story, he has demonstrated his particular belief that crime is actually not
very different from any other type of business enterprise-and the intelligent
criminal is just, one more example of ‘Organisation Man’.
In Westlake’s early novels like ‘Killing Time’ (1961), about the running
of a corrupt upstate New York town, he dealt with organised crime from the
inside with great objectivity; but over the years elements of humour and the
absurd have crept into his work in the shape of bungled robberies and inept
confidence tricks.
In 1962, by way of contrast, he adopted the pen name Richard Stark and
started a series of novels about Parker, a cold-blooded professional thief, who
was later transferred to the screen in ‘Point Blank’ featuring Lee Marvin
(1967).
Not content with this, Westlake invented a second major character, Mitch
Tobin, a guilt-ridden former New York cop turned private eye, whose adventures
appear under the name Tucker Coe.
More recently still, he has begun writing a number of capers about a
group of inept thieves led by criminal manqué John Archibald Dortmunder.
For this remarkable display of virtuosity, Donald Westlake has won
numerous awards, including three Edgars and a Grand Master Award from the
Mystery Writers of America, as well as an Oscar nomination for his screenplay
of Jim Thompson’s ‘The Grifters’. In ‘The Sweetest Man in the World’, written
in 1967, he mixes his deadpan humour and fascination with organised crime in
the tale of a clever fraud... and it’s even cleverer denouement.
Donald E. Westlake died of a heart attack on Wednesday, December 31,
2008. He was 75.
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