Wall Street Journal: Otto Penzler of the Mysterious Bookshop memorializes Donald Westlake.
One rush hour, I was reading Westlake’s novel “Drowned Hopes” on the subway when a scene became so absurdly comic that I began to laugh. As it progressed, I became utterly incapable of controlling the laughter. Passengers began to back away, terrified that they had had the bad luck to be on the train with an obvious lunatic who might turn violent at any moment.
The Guardian (UK): Stephen Frears discusses working with Westlake on the screenplay for The Grifters.
Later he wrote of the whole experience that he “hadn’t had so much fun since he was 19, in college, and had a part-time job on a beer truck with a guy named Luke”. He was wise, cautious, modest and generous, supportive and sceptical, highly intelligent, hard-boiled and soft-boiled at the same time, the best of what America has to offer.
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