Quotes About Westlake

The Parker series, by Donald E. Westlake writing as Richard Stark. The University of Chicago Press has just reissued the complete series in trade paperback, and that's a good thing, because my own

Why, Wally," he said. "Except for leaving out the part where Tom continues to be a homicidal maniac, it's all the truth.

wish you would." "Right. When I had the emerald again, I was in a cell. I guess they were afraid the rest of the guys might try to spring me right away, 'cause they hid me out in a precinct on the Upper West Side for the first

Oh, I know you like being a rogue," she assured me. "What the English call a chancer. You're unfaithful to the entire world, so why are you faithful to your wife?

Island we'd lost our Internet access to insolvency months ago.

The office containing these two men was of such hushed opulence that it seemed as though their words were borne to one another on small plush pillows.

As I considered Parker and his absurdist reflection in the Westlake-authored 'Dortmunder' novels, I wrote, 'His natural ability to observe human behavior and to follow an idea, no matter how bizarre, through to its proper, rightful finish echoed the vision of an architect.'

The tortured similes, the brooding introspection, the jaundiced view of society - nobody ever has any fun in a Ross Macdonald book.

With writing, I prefer the solo effort, but when a team is working right, as it did on 'The Grifters,' boy, it's exhilarating.

When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man.

When Stark isn't off sulking somewhere, or whatever he's doing when he won't return my calls, I alternate between the two. That usually works well, though occasionally an idea for the wrong guy drifts through my mind.

Westlake is allusive, indirect, referential, a bit rococo, Stark strips his sentences down to the necessary information.

Donald E. Westlake It's an accepted fact that Donald E. Westlake has excelled at every single sub-genre the mystery field has to offer—humorous books (Scared Monster); terrifying books (The Ax, about a man who wants vengeance on the company that downsized him out of a job, and probably Westlake's most accomplished novel);