Donald E. Westlake

Levi has an elegant tribute to Donald E. Westlake, who died on New Year's Eve. Here's a bit:

Donald E. Westlake himself warned us that this day was coming: the title of his twenty-second novel about Parker the heister, Nobody Runs Forever, serves as a reminder that even those of us who work in less risky occupations are nonetheless living on borrowed time. And what better use to make of that time than to sit down every single day at the typewriter and explore the vicissitudes of humanity, inventing characters and getting them into trouble just to see how they might get out of it? Do it long enough, do it well enough, and you just might create something that runs forever after all.

(Westlake, Levi notes, was an Anthony Powell fan.)

(Also: Sarah has a bundle of links. And here is my enthusiastic if brief shout-out to three of his Parker books, written under the pseudonym Richard Stark; they were among my favorite reads of 2008.)

(And here's Sarah's obit at the LAT.)