Donald E Westlake Books

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Author Donald Edwin Westlake was born July 12, 1933 in Brooklyn and was raised in Albany, New York. After writing a lot in his teens, he got rejected two hundred times; he would finally make a sale in 1954. He would sell more stories here and there over the years while going to college. He would later spend two years in the United States Air Force. While living in New York City, he wrote on the side and worked at a literary agency. In 1960, he started writing full time, and it was this year that he sold his first novel under his own name (the novel was called “The Mercenaries”). He was married three times, the third to a well regarded gardener and writer of two non-fiction books. The Westlake garden has been opened many times for viewing by the public in the summer. He died New Year’s Eve, 2008 from a heart attack while he was about to go to a dinner with his wife while they were on vacation in Mexico. He was 75 years old.

Order of Phil Crawford Series

# Read Title Published Details
1 Backstage Love 1959 Description / Buy
2 What Girls Will Do 1962 Description / Buy

Order of Parker Series as Richard Stark

# Read Title Published Details
1 Payback / Point Blank / The Hunter 1962 Description / Buy
2 The Steel Hit / The Man With The Getaway Face 1963 Description / Buy
3 The Outfit 1963 Description / Buy
4 The Mourner 1963 Description / Buy
5 The Score / Killtown 1963 Description / Buy
6 The Jugger 1965 Description / Buy
7 The Seventh / The Split 1966 Description / Buy
8 The Handle / Run Lethal 1966 Description / Buy
9 The Rare Coin Score 1967 Description / Buy
10 The Green Eagle Score 1967 Description / Buy
11 The Black Ice Score 1968 Description / Buy
12 The Sour Lemon Score 1969 Description / Buy
13 Slayground 1971 Description / Buy
14 Deadly Edge 1971 Description / Buy
15 Plunder Squad 1972 Description / Buy
16 Butcher's Moon 1974 Description / Buy
17 Comeback 1997 Description / Buy
18 Backflash 1998 Description / Buy
19 Flashfire / Parker 2000 Description / Buy
20 Firebreak 2001 Description / Buy
21 Breakout 2002 Description / Buy
22 Nobody Runs Forever 2004 Description / Buy
23 Ask The Parrot 2006 Description / Buy
24 Dirty Money 2008 Description / Buy

Order of Mitch Tobin Series as Tucker Coe

# Read Title Published Details
1 Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death 1966 Description / Buy
2 Murder Among Children 1967 Description / Buy
3 Wax Apple 1970 Description / Buy
4 A Jade In Aries 1970 Description / Buy
5 Don't Lie To Me 1972 Description / Buy

Order of Alan Grofield Series as Richard Stark

# Read Title Published Details
1 The Damsel 1967 Description / Buy
2 The Dame 1969 Description / Buy
3 The Blackbird 1969 Description / Buy
4 Lemons Never Lie 1971 Description / Buy

Order of Dortmunder Series

# Read Title Published Details
1 The Hot Rock 1970 Description / Buy
2 Bank Shot 1972 Description / Buy
3 Jimmy The Kid 1974 Description / Buy
4 Nobody's Perfect 1977 Description / Buy
5 Why Me? 1983 Description / Buy
6 Good Behavior 1985 Description / Buy
7 Drowned Hopes 1990 Description / Buy
8 Don't Ask 1993 Description / Buy
9 What's The Worst That Could Happen? 1996 Description / Buy
10 Bad News 2001 Description / Buy
11 The Road To Ruin 2004 Description / Buy
12 Watch Your Back! 2005 Description / Buy
13 What's So Funny? 2007 Description / Buy
14 Get Real 2009 Description / Buy

Order of Sam Holt Series

# Read Title Published Details
1 One Of Us Is Wrong 1986 Description / Buy
2 I Know A Trick Worth Two Of That 1986 Description / Buy
3 What I Tell You Three Times Is False 1987 Description / Buy
4 The Fourth Dimension Is Death 1989 Description / Buy

Order of Sara & Jack Series

# Read Title Published Details
1 Trust Me On This 1988 Description / Buy
2 Baby, Would I Lie? 1994 Description / Buy

Order of Donald E Westlake Standalone Novels

# Read Title Published Details
1 Sally 1959 Description / Buy
2 Man Hungry 1959 Description / Buy
3 All My Lovers 1959 Description / Buy
4 SO WILLING. 1960 Description / Buy
5 All about Annette 1960 Description / Buy
6 Virgin's Summer 1960 Description / Buy
7 The Wife Next Door 1960 Description / Buy
8 The Mercenaries/The Cutie 1960 Description / Buy
9 Passion's Playthings 1961 Description / Buy
10 Call Me Sinner 1961 Description / Buy
11 Campus Doll 1961 Description / Buy
12 Brother and Sister 1961 Description / Buy
13 Killing Time 1961 Description / Buy
14 Young and Innocent 1961 Description / Buy
15 361 1962 Description / Buy
16 Strange affair. 1962 Description / Buy
17 Killy 1963 Description / Buy
18 Campus Lovers 1963 Description / Buy
19 Pity Him Afterwards 1964 Description / Buy
20 The Fugitive Pigeon 1965 Description / Buy
21 The Busy Body 1966 Description / Buy
22 Spy in the Ointment 1966 Description / Buy
23 God Save the Mark 1967 Description / Buy
24 Anarchaos 1967 Description / Buy
25 Philip 1967 Description / Buy
26 Who stole Sassi Manoon? 1968 Description / Buy
27 Up Your Banners 1969 Description / Buy
28 Somebody Owes Me Money 1969 Description / Buy
29 Adios Scheherazade 1970 Description / Buy
30 Comfort Station 1970 Description / Buy
31 Ex Officio 1970 Description / Buy
32 I Gave at the Office 1971 Description / Buy
33 Cops and Robbers 1972 Description / Buy
34 Gangway! ( With: Brian Garfield) 1973 Description / Buy
35 Help, I Am Being Held Prisoner 1974 Description / Buy
36 Brothers Keepers 1975 Description / Buy
37 Two Much 1975 Description / Buy
38 Dancing Aztecs 1976 Description / Buy
39 Castle in the Air 1980 Description / Buy
40 Kahawa 1981 Description / Buy
41 A Likely Story 1984 Description / Buy
42 High Adventure 1985 Description / Buy
43 Humans 1992 Description / Buy
44 Smoke 1995 Description / Buy
45 The Ax 1997 Description / Buy
46 The Hook 2000 Description / Buy
47 The Scared Stiff 2001 Description / Buy
48 Put a Lid on It 2002 Description / Buy
49 Money for Nothing 2003 Description / Buy
50 Memory / The Actor 2010 Description / Buy
51 The Comedy is Finished 2012 Description / Buy
52 Forever and a Death 2017 Description / Buy
53 Call Me a Cab 2022 Description / Buy

Order of Donald E Westlake Short Stories/Novellas

# Read Title Published Details
1 Too Many Crooks (Short Story) 1989 Description / Buy

Order of Donald E Westlake Short Story Collections

# Read Title Published Details
1 Curious Facts Preceding My Execution 1968 Description / Buy
2 Enough 1977 Description / Buy
3 Transylvania Station ( With: Abby Westlake) 1987 Description / Buy
4 Tomorrow's Crimes 1989 Description / Buy
5 A Good Story and Other Stories 1999 Description / Buy
6 Meteor Strike 2012 Description / Buy
7 Double Feature 2020 Description / Buy

Order of Donald E Westlake Non-Fiction Books

# Read Title Published Details
1 The Getaway Car 2014 Description / Buy

Order of Transgressions Series

# Read Title Published Details
1 Transgressions ( By: Stephen King, Lawrence Block, Anne Perry, Jeffery Deaver, Sharyn McCrumb, Ed McBain, Bonnie Jeanne Perry, Joyce Carol Oates, Walter Mosley, John Farris) 2005 Description / Buy
2 Transgressions, Vol. 2 ( By: Stephen King, Lawrence Block, Ed McBain, John Farris) 2006 Description / Buy

Order of Parker Graphic Novels Series with Darwyn Cooke, as Richard Stark

# Read Title Published Details
1 The Hunter 2009 Description / Buy
2 The Outfit 2010 Description / Buy
3 The Man with the Getaway Face (Short Story) 2010 Description / Buy
4 The Score 2012 Description / Buy
5 Slayground (Short Story) 2013 Description / Buy

Donald E Westlake Anthologies

# Read Title Published Details
1 Simply The Best Mysteries, Edgar Award Winners And Front Runners 1970 Description / Buy
2 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow... 1974 Description / Buy
3 Tales to Send Chills Down Your Spine 1979 Description / Buy
4 Alfred Hitchcock's A Choice of Evils 1983 Description / Buy
5 Fifty Best Mysteries 1993 Description / Buy
6 The Plot Thickens 1997 Description / Buy
7 The Mysterious Press Anniversary Anthology: Celebrating 25 Years 2001 Description / Buy
8 Brooklyn Noir 2 2005 Description / Buy
9 Price of Desire 2005 Description / Buy
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Donald E. Westlake was quite a prolific author, writing over a hundred novels. His work was mainly crime fiction, specializing in comic capers; there are some brief forays into other genres, one of which includes science fiction. Westlake released work under his own name and under pen names, the biggest of which is Richard Stark. Under the Stark name, he wrote about Parker, who starred in 28 novels. Other characters he wrote about include Phil Crawford, Dortmunder, Mitchell Tobin, Grofield,Sam Holt, and Sara Joslyn. Dortmunder is the comic flip side of Parker, and once said that a novel he wrote (“The Hot Rock”) was supposed to be a Parker, but kept turning funny. It became book one of the “Dortmunder” series. He also wrote stand alone novels and some short stories. Westlake also wrote some screenplays that include “Cops and Robbers”, “The Stepfather”, and “The Grifters”.

DONALD E. WESTLAKE AWARDS

He is one of three authors to win three Edgar Awards in three categories; in 1968 he won for “God Save the Mark” (best novel), in 1991 for “The Grifters” (best screenplay), and in 1990 for writing “Too Many Crooks” (best short story). The Mystery Writers of America named him a Grand Master, which is their highest honor. Westlake was nominated for an Academy Award for the work he did on “The Grifters” in the best adapted screenplay category.

DONALD E. WESTLAKE BOOKS INTO MOVIES/TV

Many movies have been made based of Westlake’s work. “The Hunter” has twice been made into a movie, once called “Point Blank” (with Lee Marvin playing Walker, who was supposed to be Parker) and the second time it was called “Payback” with Mel Gibson playing Parker but his name was changed to Porter. Jason Statham played Parker in 2013, in a movie that was based off of “Flashfire”. “The Hot Rock” was adapted in 1972, with Robert Redford playing Dortmunder. In 1973, Robert Duvall played Parker (named Macklin in this picture) in “The Outfit”.

BEST DONALD E. WESTLAKE BOOKS

For those readers looking to get into novels by Donald E. Westlake, this section will help with that. It will go over the novels “The Hot Rock” and “Bank Shot”.

The Hot Rock: This is the first novel in the “Dortmunder” series and was released in the year 1970. Introducing John Archibald Dortmunder, who does not carry guns, nor does he allow his crew to carry them. After he gets out after his recent stay in jail, he has another score. It is a large gem that is called Balabomo Emerald that has a worth of about half a million dollars. His client on this one is the United Nations ambassador of Talabwo (an African nation). Akinzi currently has the gem, and they are the neighbor of Talabwo. They will get 150,000 in cash when they are able to deliver the stone. All of the planning and preparations go well, as is the execution. But the results of the heist are terrible. That is because Dortmunder has the worst luck of any thief there is.

Bank Shot: This is the second novel in the “Dortmunder” series and was released in the year 1972. John Archibald Dortmunder has been working on a scam selling encyclopedias until he can pull of his next big heist. This newest mark is wise to what is going on, and he has to get out quick. He may have a lead on the next con, the Main Street bank is working out of a mobile home, for just a short time. All he has to do is get past the seven guards and get the bank on wheels rolling and drive off. Simple plan. One that goes wrong.

When Does The Next Donald E Westlake book come out?

Donald E Westlake doesn't seem to have an upcoming book. Their newest book is Call Me a Cab and was released on February, 1st 2022.

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