Donald Westlake, who died New Year's Eve, at the age 0f 75, while vacationing in Mexico, was best known as a "crime writer", and in that capacity he won three Edgar Awards (including one for Best Screenplay for his adaptation of Jim Thompson's The Grifters, directed by Stephen Frears in 1990) and was honored by the Mystery Writers of America with the title of Grand Master. But such tributes barely hint at Westlake's stature as a supreme, all-around entertainer with a wide range within his chosen specialty. After publishing his first novel, The Mercenaries, in 1960, Westlake established such a steady rate of production that, in addition to the many books he published under his own name, he also adopted more than ten pseudonyms, partly to deflect criticism of him for overtaxing the marketplace. (He may have also had other, personal reasons, for sticking the name "John B. Allan" on the 1961 book Elizabeth Taylor: A Fascinating Story of America's Most Talented Actress and the World's Most Beautiful Woman and other pseudonyms on the pulp porn novels he wrote in the 1950s and 1960s, some of them in collaboration with Lawrence Block, which have titles such as Sin Sucker and Campus Tramp.) Westlake also matched certain pseuds up with recurring characters, for instance writing a string of mysteries about a character named Mitch Tobin under the name "Tucker Coe".

His best-known alter ego was Richard Stark, who, starting with 1962's The Hunter, wrote more than twenty taut, mean thrillers about Parker, a cooled-out, super-efficient sociopath of a professional thief. Under his own name, Westlake wrote, among other titles, the John Dortmunder series, detailing the often hilarious adventures of an intelligent, hard-working, frequently put-upon crook with a knack for gaudily designed heists that tended to run into equally gaudy complications. (The series began with 1972's The Hit Rock, which he said began as a Parker novel; he realized that he needed to concoct a new hero for it when the plot started turning funny on him.) Stark and Westlake both kept 'em coming until 1974, when Parker abruptly disappeared after Westlake, as he would later say, lost internal contact with the hateful bastard. But in the late '90s, Westlake seemed to get back in touch with his Parker side, and Richard Stark began producing again, even as Westlake continued to publish under his own name such entertainments as The Ax, The Hook, and the further activities of John Dortmunder in such novels as Watch Your Back!

In addition to adapting Thompson for the Grifters screenplay (and, more recently, Patricia Highsmith for the 2005 Ripley Under Ground), Westlake wrote one terrific original screenplay, for the chilling yet witty serial-killer movie The Stepfather (1987), directed by Joseph Ruben and starring a then-unknown Terry O'Quinn. The list of Westlake novels made into movies include the 1973 caper comedy Cops and Robbers, which he adapted himself; The Hot Rock, with Robert Redford as Dortmunder; the calamitous 1974 Bank Shot starring George C, Scott; the 1982 Jimmy the Kid, in which a Dortmunder novel somehow got turned into a vehicle for Gary Coleman; the 2001 What's the Worse That Could Happen?, in which a Dortmunder novel somehow got turned into a vehicle for Martin Lawrence; and the 2005 French film Le Couperet, directed by Costa-Gavras and based on the novel The Ax. There have also been a slew of movies base on the Parker novels, though for some reason the character's name has yet to survive the screenplay adaptation process. The grandaddy of Richard Stark movies is John Boorman's 1967 Point Blank, based on The Hunter and starring Lee Marvin as the monolithically homicidal "Walker." (It was remade, in 1999, as Payback, with Mel Gibson as "Porter.") Jean-Luc Godard also used the Parker novel The Jugger as the (loose) basis for his 1966 film Made in U.S.A., without paying for the honor, which would ultimately cause his movie distribution problems in the States. Westlake's last novel, a Dortmunder number called Get Real, is scheduled to be published in the spring.