The Discussion Continues: Donald E. Westlake’s Call Me A Cab

The cover copy for Call Me A Cab is downright odd. It makes much of the concept of mystery fans wondering about whether a suspense novel could be constructed without any crime. There are a host of obvious suggestions to fit the bill: most scientists-grappling-with-a-disease/outbreak books, contemporary novels about people taking the leap from safety […]

Language Barriers: Castle in the Air

Well before the time of his death, Donald E Westlake was renowned as the master of the heist both in a serious vein (via the Parker Books under his Richard Stark nom de plume) as well as its comic cousin. This rep was well deserved, since the man wrote thrilling heists like no one else. […]

Spread It Around: Walking Around Money

In the early ’00s, literary suspense author Evan Hunter (perhaps better known by his police procedural inventing pseudonym, Ed McBain) decided on a great idea: Bring back the novella. Of course, novellas had never actually gone away, but they were in no way as ever present as they had been in the pulp fiction days […]

You Know Who You Are: Ordo

After a lengthy and somewhat twisty read like “A Travesty,” readers of the 2020-reissued collection Double Feature might be surprised to find a second novella that is not quite half the length of the first and about as far removed from the mood and intensity of that novella as you can get. However, that is […]

One Hell of a Detective: “A Travesty”

In 1977, Donald E. Westlake released a book called Enough. Here in the states, that book collected two works, the short novel “A Travesty” and the novella length “Ordo”; in the UK that book included only the short novel. Enough went out of print a few decades ago. Luckily, the good folks at Hard Case […]

Pulling Off a Big One: Donald E. Westlake’s Forever and a Death

For a man who often published multiple books a year, Donald E. Westlake left a surprising number of trunk volumes behind. After he passed in 2008, Hard Case Crime released welcome reissues of his back catalog. As well, they released unpublished works. Memory was the first of these, followed by The Comedy is Finished. Imagine […]

Things Done in Violence Have to Be Done Over Again: Donald E. Westlake’s The Comedy is Finished

When Hard Case Crime released Memory, it was not necessarily billed as the last unpublished novel by the late grand master. However, readers might have built that assumption. Then, another unpublished novel from the late author was announced titled, appropriately enough The Comedy Is Finished. Was this the book the author intended as his final […]

Considering Westlake: Memory

After his death in 2008 and the posthumous release of Get Real, readers held no expectations of seeing anything new from author Donald E. Westlake ever again. However, this was not to be the case. To date, publishing imprint Hard Case Crime has been a strong champion for Westlake’s works, reprinting early material while the […]

Considering Westlake: Get Real

On December 31, 2008, Donald E. Westlake suffered a heart attack while on vacation with his wife Abby in Mexico. The final Richard Stark novel Dirty Money had been on stands in hardback for eight months at that point. The final novel Westlake worked on for publication would not appear for another seven months and, […]

Considering Westlake: Dirty Money

For a book that Westlake did not intend to be a finale for his nom de plume’s long running series, Dirty Money does a good job wrapping up a bunch of loose ends. In this novel, Parker kicks off the action getting a ride out of the dangerous location of the locked down area where […]

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