News for week ending 2011-12-31

The Smashers: http://t.co/1oC6gNe9 # MTV Geek reviews Parker: The Martini Edition http://t.co/KqaLRbDE # Rich Harvey at New Pulp Press reviews Point Blank: http://t.co/j0mSMeU3 # A short piece of Dortmunder fan fiction: http://t.co/OPNxKP3o # Randy Johnson reviews Donald Westlake's I Gave at the Office, which must have the worst cover in the history of covers […]

The Four Days of Grofield Day Four: Lemons Never Lie

Donald Westlake gave up the genre experimentation of the first three Alan Grofield novels in favor of just writing a Richard Stark novel for volume four. Thank goodness–it’s easily the best of the series.

I was critical of this one when these covers were first made public, but in retrospect I think I was […]

The Four Days of Grofield Day Three: The Blackbird

My least favorite book in the Grofield series gets my favorite cover–how do you like that? Esteemed co-blogger Nick thought more of it than I did.

The Blackbird: A Grofield Novel

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The Four Days of Grofield Day Two: The Dame

As you know if you’ve read the books, or read esteemed co-blogger Nick’s recent reviews of the books (1, 2, 3, 4), the Grofield series appears to be Westlake’s attempt to create a series where he experimented with a different genre in each volume. The Dame is the whodunit, which I think this cover […]

The Four Days of Grofield Day One: The Damsel

With the Twelve Days of Christmas just having passed and blogging that involves actual writing unlikely to happen until the debut of the new year, now seems like the ideal time to unveil the covers of the upcoming University of Chicago reprints of the four Alan Grofield solo adventures.

We’ve linked to these before, […]

News for week ending 2011-12-24

I don’t speak or read French, so I can’t tell you a thing about these editions other than that they look gorgeous: http://t.co/jFLei5EG #

Reviews: Red and Buried and One Horse Open Slay by James Mullaney

James Mullaney was a ghostwriter for Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir’s Destroyer series in its final years, and was the only author fully embraced by fans after Will Murray left the series. He was so popular that he became the only author besides Murphy and Sapir to get cover billing, in the sadly short-lived […]

Donald E. Westlake’s farewell to science fiction: responses by Frederik Pohl, Westlake, and others

This, I’m sure we’ll all be relieved to hear, will be my final Violent World of Parker post for the year. Fear not, however (or, possibly, fear greatly): there’s plenty more to come from me in the new year, not just on Westlake but also on some other writers whose work intersects […]

News for week ending 2011-12-17

The return of Matt Helm: http://t.co/sm3J0P5k # The folks at the Strange Adventures Comic Book Store celebrate the release of the Martini Edition in high style: http://t.co/gyTtT8jn # Lee Goldberg's Judgment (The Jury Series #1 originally published as .357 Vigalante) is free this week for Kindle http://t.co/QpBw1cZa # Deirdre Donahue in USA TODAY–Self-published authors […]

“Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You”: Donald E. Westlake’s farewell to science fiction (from The Best of Xero)

I actually have Violent World of Parker reader Sandra Bond to thank for this latest post—or, more accurately, couple of posts: there’s a lot to cover here, so it’ll be better if I split it into two missives. Sandra emailed me after I’d finished my second run of reviews of Westlake’s SF stories to […]