Donald E. Westlake, 1933-2008
We’ve just received word that Donald E. Westlake passed away yesterday.
Donald is probably best known to comics fans as the author (under the psuedonym Richard Stark) of the Parker novels that Darwyn Cooke is adapting and bringing to IDW Publishing later this year. But that’s the barest fraction of his output. Over a career that lasted decades, he was a four-time Edgar Award winner in four different categories. In 1993, the Mystery Writers of America named Westlake a Grand Master, their highest honor.
His novels were turned into twenty-one different movies, including Payback and The Hot Rock (featuring his famous character John Dortmunder) and wrote screenplays on his own, most notably for The Grifters, where he was nominated for an Academy Award, The Stepfather, and a treatment for the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies.
He will be missed.
Here’s a promo image from the upcoming Cooke series:
