Continuing this week's unexpected run of Donald Westlake posts . . . Part of the reason the Parker novels are so effective is their spare hardness, the sense that Westlake's writing (as Stark) gives that not a single word is being wasted. Westlake's...

In Sunday's post I wrote about an aside in Donald Westlake's introduction to Levine (1984), his collection of interlinked short stories about a New York cop. That was only one of many asides, however--the whole twelve-page intro is worth searching out...

Reading Donald Westlake's introduction to Levine (1984), a collection of his short stories about NYPD cop Abe Levine, I was gobsmacked by a passing mention of a project that fell by the wayside as he was working on those stories:In the spring of 1982,...

In writing about Anthony Powell's Venusburg last weekend, I quoted a passage wherein the protagonist, Lushington, gets saddled, entirely against his will, with a valet named Pope. Described as "a curious character," by the time he actually shows up, he...

So . . . back on Monday I promised that, come today, proper blogging would resume. You know, the usual: some aptly chosen passages, maybe some wry commentary mixed with earnest enthusiasm and bone-deep nerdy love of books? Well, it turns out that I...