Donald E. Westlake

SE N'E' ANDATO proprio alla fine dell'anno passato uno dei miei scrittori preferiti: Donald E. Westlake.

He used many names in part to combat skepticism over his rapid rate of writing books, which at some points reached four a year.

“In the beginning, people didn’t want to publish more than one book a year by the same author,” said Susan Richman, his publicist at Grand Central Publishing, his current publisher. In the later half of his career, Mr. Westlake had narrowed himself to his own name and Richard Stark, author of a dark series about a one-name criminal named Parker.

The full panoply of all his books was a spectacle to behold, his friends said. “We were in his library, this beautiful library surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of titles, and I realize that every single book was written by Donald Westlake, English language and foreign language editions,” said Laurence Kirschbaum, his agent.