Axed

Donald E. Westlake, one of America’s most successful mystery writers, has died of a heart attack at the age of 75. Westlake said he relied on manual typewriters rather than have an electronic model or computer humming back at him while he thought, and had to keep a collection of back-ups to cannibalize for parts for his discontinued model. He turned out more than 100 books and 5 screenplays over the course of 50 years. At his peak, he put Steven King to shame, producing 4 books a year, but some publishers think that it takes more than 3 months to turn out a quality book, so he used a plethora of pseudonyms to mask his prolificity, eventually settling on using his own name for stories about an unintentionally comical criminal named John Dortmunder, and as Richard Stark wrote a series about an anti-hero and criminal named Parker. Another character was Burke Devore, the downsized executive turned murderer in “The Ax,” whom The New York Times described in 1997 “as emblematic of his time as George F. Babbitt and Holden Caulfield and Capt. John Yossarian were of theirs.” He earned an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay for The Grifters, three Edgar Awards and the title of Grand Master from the Mystery Writers of America in 1993.