Fourth (fourteenth?) anniversary

Lots of stuff going on in my so-called “real life” at the moment, so this post is late and a bit more perfunctory than last year’s. But I did want to mark the anniversary, even if it is late.

As I’ve mentioned before, I think of the real anniversary of the current VWOP as […]

Hard Case Crime review: The Comedy is Finished by Donald E. Westlake (#105)

But Seriously, Folks.

The year is 1977, and America is finally getting over the nightmares of Watergate and Vietnam and the national hangover that was the 1960s. But not everyone is ready to let it go. Not aging comedian Koo Davis, friend to generals and presidents and veteran of countless USO tours to buck […]

Grab-bag post: SFFaudio podcast on Donald Westlake’s The Comedy is Finished, plus the Destroyer and John Carter (of Mars)

The Comedy is Finished

I recently recorded a podcast on The Comedy is Finished, hosted by Jesse Willis of SFFaudio and also featuring DEW’s son Paul Westlake, who, needless to say, had much more to add than I did.

This is a free-ranging discussion of both the novel […]

Donald Westlake’s lost novel, The Comedy is Finished, out today

I’m afraid I’ve let you down, here. I was planning on having The Comedy is Finished read and reviewed in time for today’s release and had set aside Thursday through Sunday for just that. Unfortunately, I had to lend a friend a hand Thursday night and due to some technology problems early last week, […]

Violent World of Parker Gazette Extra! DEW Day Edition!

I like screwing around with new gadgets for the website. Most of those gadgets aren’t worth a damn, which is why this site has very few of them. But I like it when a good one comes around.

I’ve been messing with a new feature, which I’ve named the Violent World of Parker Gazette, […]

The Violent World of Parker’s third anniversary!

Strap yourselves in and get ready to skim. This is going to be a long one.

About the Site

I think of the relaunched Violent World of Parker as having been born on New Year’s Day, 2009, the day after Donald Westlake died. But the half-formed results of the relaunch weren’t made public until […]

Lost Westlake novel coming in 2012

We’ve been following the story of this book for awhile now, and now its release is officially scheduled for February 21, 2012.

From Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai:

A bit of exciting Hard Case Crime news this morning: we’re going to be bringing out a never-before-published novel by the great Donald […]

This is (almost) it.

Hard Case Crime impresario Charles Ardai drops some knowledge at Rara-Avis.

> Oh, one other question: I guess this means there were no > just-finished works left behind when [Donald Westlake] died?

No, no just-finished works. At the end of his life, Don was publishing his books as quickly as […]