That’s right. You heard me.
Crime Novels of the 1960s: Nine Classic Thrillers (boxed set)
Some time back, I did a piece here about how Westlake deserves his own Library of America anthology. Well, this ain’t it. But I guess it’s a start?
I’ve read five of the nine. Obviously the Stark. I have lost score of how many times. I would imagine the attraction there is that it’s incredibly entertaining, a true standalone, the entire book is about the heist, it’s short (more room for other books), and there’s a movie based on it in French. Oooh la la, le cachet! And it is unequivocally from the 60’s. The Jugger and The Seventh would have been highly viable alternatives, but looking at the rest of the selection, this is good counterpoint. Not least in that Parker is unequivocally victorious in this one.
This is a very belated follow-up to a previous anthology which featured Noir novels of the 1950’s, and wouldn’t you know, a lot of the same names show up here, but it’s a two volume set, so more–and merrier.
Have not read The Murderers, Dead Calm, The Fiend, or Doll. I suppose I could now. (Hell, I bet they’re all upstairs where I work, or most of them).
The Name of the Game of Death I covered when I did my piece on Dan J. Marlowe’s oddly oblique parallels with Westlake. I honestly have nothing more to say about it, except that since I own a copy of the Gold Medal paperback (technically, a British reprint), I don’t need any other format. It well merits inclusion, but must still shake my head that Westlake got this honor, through a pseudonym, the same exact time Marlowe, a far less accomplished mystery author, got it under his own name.
The Expendable Man is a tricky book to write about. For the same precise reason Dashiell Hammett’s obscure intriguing 1933 ultra-short story Nightshade is. Also Charles Willeford’s short shattering 1955 novel, Pick-Up (which appeared in the 1950’s anthology). You can’t synopsize any of them without giving away a pretty crucial plot reveal, that people often think Dorothy B. Hughes invented. She didn’t. She was a massive Hammett groupie, and at least half her novels (I’ve read all of them) reference The Maltese Falcon in one way or another.
Since Nightshade later appeared in the somewhat misleadingly titled 1944 quickie anthology, The Adventures of Sam Spade (he’s in there–kinda), the odds she hadn’t read Nightshade are in the negative integers. She read it, revised it, greatly expanded upon it, moved the protagonist way up in social class, and I’m inclined to say, made the proceedings a bit Wokeist–in the 1960’s. Not Wokeist on the subject of reproductive rights, though (abortion itself is treated as the crime in crime novel). She wasn’t that far ahead of the curve–behind it in many ways–and Roe V. Wade didn’t exist yet. (Nor does it now.)
Hughes was, in my estimation, an old school Republican (she never namechecks or even vaguely alludes to FDR even once in her novels set during or shortly after WWII), which means she can seem very progressive in some ways now, and very not at all in others. She’s worth reading, but having worked all the way through the oeuvre, I’d say all you really need of her is Ride the Pink Horse, In A Lonely Place, and The Davidian Report. But you need those. If anybody tells you she invented Noir, give them some early Cornell Woolrich to read (I guarantee you she was reading it).
(Oh, and if you think you know the middle one I mentioned, by far her most famous, because you saw the Bogart film, with Gloria Grahame–you don’t. Seriously. At all. Look at the screen credit. “Based upon a story by Dorothy B. Hughes.” The check cleared, and she got to meet Bogie, so she was happy. Hughes had to write quite a few successful but deeply formulaic potboilers featuring plucky ingenues in peril, before she found her feet. Interestingly, though she most often wrote from a female POV, her three best novels all feature male protagonists, though one of them is pure evil–yet oddly sympathetic.
That’s all I’m saying about her work for now, except this–Do not, under any circumstances, pay good money for a used copy of The Big Barbecue. A misguided attempt at social satire and romantic comedy. Her only novel that isn’t currently evailable, and for her reputation’s sake, I hope it never is. Thank God for Interlibrary Loan.
Point is, whatever you think of The Expendable Man (I’d call it the weakest of the five I’ve read in this LOA collection, and decidedly inferior to the Hammett and Willeford stories–she’s way too Western Union about it), you can’t credit her for the plot twist everybody who reads this one invariably brings up, because Hammett got there decades earlier, and she’d have been the first to admit it, if anybody had ever asked her. I can’t say what she’d have thought of Willeford. Or if she ever did. (Nobody ever thinks of him as woke, and he likes it that way.)
I read the Himes offering maybe two years back. It’s not as good as any of his Harlem Detective novels (is anything that good? seriously inquiring.), but it has its own quirky charms. There are two major protagonists, one of whom is the villain, a murderous corrupt drug-addicted racist white cop with serious personal issues, even by 60’s crime fiction standards, and that’s going some. The other, our hero, is a handsome, athletic, and very decent clean-cut young black man, who just wants to stay alive by any means necessary. Give you one guess who owns the book. Himes could be really perverse. (I mean, the cop has fully consensual biblical knowledge of the hero’s girlfriend at one point).
You won’t be putting it down very often. That I guarantee you. Lives up to the title and then some. But what struck me when I read it was that something about the way the villain is introduced to us weirdly invoked the way we meet Parker in The Hunter. No, it’s not on a bridge. But even so. It felt familiar. If you read it, let me know what you thought. That Himes read Stark I’m not really in much doubt about, but this is the only time I felt I’d detected even the faintest whisper of an homage. If that’s what it is.
And then there’s the Highsmith. This is a very odd pick. I mean, is this even a crime novel? It’s one of my favorites of hers. Probably my absolute favorite that isn’t part of the Ripliad. It’s a splendid book. It’s full of marvelous insights about how people behave when they get way off the beaten track and lose themselves. It even has what I think you might call a happy ending. For Highsmith. Have to get that qualifier in.
And there are no murders in it. Not exactly. Accidental homicide? Even that isn’t certain. The only clear resolution involves a very nice German Shepherd (Highsmith loved animals, which to me is a sort of healing balm for the way she utterly loathed people, not least herself).
The title is a head-scratcher, because nobody in it is a forger. (Ripley was, but he’s not in this one). And it’s not out of print. (Is any Highsmith out of print?) But they picked it. If you want to know why, ask them. Maybe it was cheaper to get the rights for. You know, that’s probably it. But if you like her, you’ll love this.
Do I need to buy this? I’d say hell no, except for the mention of ‘updated author biographies.’ How updated? Are we talking short slightly tweaked snippets or would I learn something I don’t already know? You can buy the two volumes separately, and of course both are evailable. And I work for a library, so good bet it’ll be crossing my desk in the near future. I’ll think about it.
So anyway, that’s a book review of a book I haven’t seen yet. Original, huh? If anybody’s wondering, yes, that’s me writing shippy song-laden fanfic on a different blog, related to a shortlived TV show based on comic books. I don’t judge your personal lives. I needed to get out of my writing rut. Break the block-ade. It may even be working. We shall see.
The Westlake Review 
Hey, at least you read five of them, I’ve only read two. >_>
While I’ll always love The Seventh most, I ultimately agree with them picking The Score. As Greg would say (and has said, iirc), it’s the most quintessential installment in the series. If you had to pick just one book to recommend to potential newcomers (not that you’d want to, mind), you really can’t pick a more perfect starting place. It includes all the important elements of a Parker and it’s simply an iconic story for the character.
Again, for all that The Seventh is my personal favorite. I personally think it’s a better story, though it doesn’t; have that stark eye catching story hook The Score has. Parker comes home to a lover killed and the entire score of a heist stolen? Intriguing. Parker and co. try to pull a heist that includes robbing the entire wealth of a small town? Sign me the fuck up.
That aside, my personal thoughts about Westlake getting into the LoA (in a fasion): I would’ve thought The Ax would be picked. Not for this specific collection, of course, but perhaps another?
With so many Parkers from that decade, it’s going to feel arbitrary no matter which one they use. I was hoping they’d pick something out of print. So that it wouldn’t be anymore. Not a lot of out-of-print Westlake’s left–mainly not from the 60’s, and not in any sense crime fiction.
Killing Time? Problem is, much as that’s a very good book, it feels like what it is–repurposed Hammett. A revisionist Red Harvest. The Score, say what you will, is a book nobody else had written before, and every attempt to rewrite it since has fallen flat by comparison. I’m sure they talked about using The Seventh. Maybe they were worried Little People would object?
Westlake was unequivocally one of the dominant crime writers of the 60’s, so they couldn’t leave him out. But he was most dominant as Stark, so it had to be a Parker. (And The Score introduces Grofield, let’s not be forgetting that).
The 50’s anthology was a brilliant bit of work, because when it came out in 1997, edited by Robert Polito (one of Jim Thompson’s several biographers), it was something of a revelation. This one, edited by Geoffrey O’Brien (should I have mentioned that in the article?) is a lot less surprising. These books are all pretty easy to get now. But it’s a nice eclectic batch, all the same.
I mean, they think about book sales over there. They did an entire anthology that was only David Goodis. Another that was only Ross Macdonald. All I know about him is that Westlake thought he had terrific carbon paper. Meaning he kept writing the same book, over and over, and people like that, reassuring, so they kept buying it. Over and over.
Notice that the previous anthology was identified as 50’s Noir. This is 60’s Crime Novels. It’s like bugs and insects. All Noir is Crime Fiction, not all Crime Fiction is Noir. Jim Thompson published probably his best shit in the 60’s. He ain’t here. Honestly, most of this would easily qualify as Noir. Never been sure I consider the Parkers to be, but they are often described as such. The Expendable Man is Noir in a different sense of the word. The ending isn’t, though. Hughes didn’t really have a Noir sensibility in most of her work, for all people slapped that label on her. Nobody asked her before they did it. Well, why would they?
Btw, I think you typed your comment a mite hastily? You want I should edit? Or let it stand?
Welp, lol. Yes, an edit would greatly appreciated.
I did the best forensic fix-up I could manage. I think I divined your meaning? There but for the grace of the edit button go I.
As to The Ax, I suppose they’ll be doing a collection from the 90’s at some point, but that was one of his all-time top sellers. It merits inclusion; doesn’t really need it. If they’d include a few of his out-of-print novels with it, I’d be down. A Likely Story, Up Your Banners, Adios Scheherazade. I’d spring for that anthology, and I’d even get the physical volume. Or volumes.
What I’d like to see is Westlake getting his own anthology. Not impossible. Reaction to Goodis’ Down There in the 50’s anthology probably led to Polito getting to do an entire Goodis collection, which he did a very good job with. Many of those books were not easy to get at the time. (Some are still a bit thin on the ground).
Fun fact about Goodis. Sad, too. A perennial barfly (the man did his research), after his marriage broke up, he had a long-standing relationship with Selma Burke, a brilliant sculptor who did a bas relief of FDR (reportedly he canceled some meetings to spend more time talking to her), and if you want to see what it looked like–you got a dime on you?
The sad part is, she was very much in love with him, and there’s no reason to think he didn’t feel the same. Best guess is, aside from his drinking problem, he didn’t think Selma was the kind of girl he could take home to mother. (She was black.) And his work is basically a study in how not to live happily ever after, so again–research.
Well, I got the first volume for Kindle–the one with The Score in it. I read Geoffrey O’Brien’s intro, which is thoughtful, well-written, and says there are 23 Parker novels. Hmm.
The exact quote–“The Score (1964) was the fifth in the series; which would eventually encompass 23 titles.”
I mean, does he consider The Hunter to be not part of the series, since it was originally meant to be a standalone? He gives no indication that he knows any of that, and who wouldn’t consider Casino Royale to be part of the Bond series?
No mention of Bucklin Moon insisting Parker be resurrected and pressed back into service. Honestly, I learned nothing here I didn’t already know, and that goes for the biographical material in back, which seems well-researched, but hardly revelatory, and you’d learn at least as much from Wikipedia.
Granted, very few readers are going to put in the time I did learning about Westlake, but how hard is it to remember there are as many Parker novels in the series as there are hours in a day?
I know O’Brien has many irons in the fire, and anyone can have a brain fart–though you know, there are Wikipedia articles and everything. But is LOA really that hard-up for fact-checkers? I can’t believe nobody noticed. He’s a the biggest wheel there is at LOA, and my guess is, nobody there dared to mention he’d screwed up. The publishing world Westlake wrote about in A Likely Story (now there’s a book LOA would be performing a public service by resurrecting) has likely only changed for the worse in most respects. LOA is non-profit, but that really makes no never-mind. They’re all still thinking about their careers. A good gig is a good gig.
If you spring for the hardcovers, you better know you’re just getting an impressive-looking decoration for your bookcase. Mine are already full to bursting, and I think I’ll pass. No regrets about the purchase–two books in there I haven’t read, and I’ll read them.
Well, look’s like I have to be a dick about it. There is some irony in writing “He’s a the biggest wheel…” in a diatribe about mistakes. On the other hand, I’m not afraid you’ll fire me.
You’re fired. Say goodbye to that sweet pension plan I never got around to telling you about. 😉
Hey, just think of it as you being the Bernstein to Fred’s Woodward, constantly taking his work before it’s submitted and rewriting it for improvements (…Why yes, I did watch All The President’s Men recently, how did you know?) .
I’m going to leave the mistake in–obviously that was just me writing the sentence one way, then deciding to write it another way, and forgetting to take out the discarded article of speech–just as a testament to the fact I still have sharp-eyed readers, even if I give them damn little to read of late. I’ll try to amend that. Once I’m done with my fanfiction flirt.
Btw, HG–are congrats in order? I’m not exactly clear on this, but were you in some kind of labor action lately? Seems like it might be ending in some kind of victory.
I personally wasn’t, but the WGA has certainly been kicking ass lately. Yeah, I’m mostly a novelist these days; and I’m not involved with any literature unions either.
That being said, with how book publishing companies are starting to act around Art Imitation, I wouldn’t be surprised if I had to get involved with a literary strike.
But yeah, if I was leading you on, then that was my mistake. If anything, you should be sending well wishes to Greg. As well as a hearty congratulations if this deal ends up going through well.
Actually, hold on, I think missed the most important thing, here: You’re writing fan fic again? Where can I find it?
Literally, over to the right of the page you’re looking at–the Known Associates list. I didn’t mean to put a link there, and yet there’s three of them. It’s a WordPress glitch.
I hope you’re not offended by my horrible prose. If you didn’t watch Gotham Knights, might want to stream it first. I’m writing this with the assumption nobody is reading it who didn’t watch the show. And most people didn’t, which is why it’s canceled. 🙂
I certainly send well wishes to the members of any union victorious in a strike.
And would any of your novels be available, perchance?
This fanfic I’m doing for fun is going to end up novel-length the way I’m going, but I can’t sell it to anybody. I just wanted to know what it felt like, and I never had much gift for creating characters worth reading about. And I think I’ve abused the Westlake Estate enough with my Dortmunder pastiches. I’d rather rob Warner Brothers. Like Willie Sutton, I go where the money is. I just never get any. 😉
Nothing publicly available at the moment, I’m afraid. But I’m not gonna let that keep me down. I might not win if I do step in, but I’ll always lose if I don’t, you know?
Gotham Knights, wow! Gotta say, wasn’t what I expected you to tackle. That’s not a judgment, mind. I used to watch Gotham religiously back in high school, I have no right to criticize, >_>.
I admit I haven’t watched this particular incarnation, but I’m very familiar with the world of Batman so I might fare better than most. So yeah, I’ll give it a look when I can!
Well, you were surprised I liked Adventure Time. I am a lifelong weirdo, get used to that. It’s my persuasion. Geez, are you going get get on my case about being unconventional? 😉
One of my challenges here is that one of the characters is a transgender male, who was played on the show by a transgender male actor, Tyler DiChiara, who is very talented. You are still the only TG I’ve ever communicated with. Knowingly, at least. I just write him as a smart, loyal, artistic, and somewhat edgy person who happens to be TG. That’s okay, right? That’s how he was on the show.
Only two of the six main characters are straight (well, nobody knows about this version of Robin, because she’s 15, and they are NOT going there), and one of them is played by a gay Brit, Oscar Morgan, who is a douche with douche hair in the pilot, but he grows on you, and the hair improves a lot, except weirdly it regresses in the season/series finale. His character is not the least bit gay, on the show or in my fic.
Obviously I’m there for the sexy wise-cracking redhead played by the very blonde Olivia Rose Keegan, who is a genius. (The character and her actress). I don’t have to be impartial, it’s goddam fanfic! I use the word “Duela-centric” on the front page of the blog! I coined that word! It’s mine! If you use it, you owe me money!
Oh, and put a lot of songs in there for Duela to sing. Yes, they’re mostly still under copyright, and so what? I copy/pasted every goddam lyric from the goddam internet. Let them prosecute all the other lyric-thieves before they get to me! I post YouTube videos featuring said songs at the end of each chapter, so people who don’t know what good music is will be able to hear the song in their head. (Songs on the show were uniformly awful, because the rights to contemporary crap from little-known artists are cheap).
But it’s not a musical. Meaning I have to create story-based reasons for her to sing, and justify the existence of accompanying music, or else have Duela go acapella. You see what I did there.
I was born this way. Don’t judge. 😐
Yeah I guess, in retrospect, the fact your blog was (for the most part) solely about one guy’s entire bibliography should’ve clued me on your unconventionality.
And hey, you’re the only Irish New Yorker I regularly communicate with. Knowingly, at least. So consider us, even. 😉
In all seriousness though, and if you’re not just being rhetorical, I’d say that’s a good approach to writing a trans character.
I really liked all the main characters, but what made me determined to finish what is almost certainly a story that will never be finished in the medium it began in, is the cliffhanger.
The producers (they aren’t conventional either) knew going in they probably weren’t getting renewed. They were on a sinking ship, the USS CW, and they were part of the ballast that would get tossed to keep it afloat a short while longer. But for story and character reasons, they wanted the ending they’d written for that season. So they stuck with it.
They had gotten Duela involved with Turner (the douche who grows on you), and it had turned into a surprisingly compelling romance. But the show ends with Duela believing Turner is dead, even though we’re left in no doubt he’s not. He can’t get back to her. It really really sucks when you get involved in a story, and it ends like that when you know it wasn’t supposed to.
So I’m ending it the way I think it’s supposed to end. Probably not the way it would have in subsequent seasons, but there aren’t any, so I can, for once, take control of the narrative that hooked me, then threw me back.
There’s a lot of Gotham Knights fanfic out there. Most of it predictably focused entirely on the characters’ sex lives, and crammed to the gills with Mary Sues.
But it’s mainly on fanfic archives. Have you ever seen the formatting on those things? You have to write endless disclaimers, and come up with all these abbreviations for all the story elements, so people know who’s going to sleep with whom.
I hate fanfic. With a bloody vengeance. But here I am, writing it. On my own terms, on my own blog. Fuck their idiotic TOS.
It’s going fast. I should be done in a few months. Honestly, sometimes I almost like what I’ve written. Which almost certainly means it’s terrible. Good writers usually hate everything they write. Great writers always do. But me just some of the time. So maybe I’m okay?
And no, I was not being rhetorical. Cullen is a kick-ass character on the show, and I try to do him justice. But my heart still belongs to Duela.
Do you think that Stark was picked over Westlake for this volume because of Westlake’s reputation as a “crime caper” novelist? I’ve often seen him described as such, and I confess to using that as my simple description of him.
It’s similar to H.G. Wells, who is most often described as a science fiction writer even though, like Westlake, he wrote many other kinds of books. Also, I wonder if Stark had more intellectual appeal. How many Westlake books have been re-issued with long introductions?
Meant “comic caper” novelist.
Self-evidently, Dortmunder and the Nephews aren’t going to be in this collection, but as we both know, Westlake wrote some very dark stuff in the 60’s under his own name. 361 would have fit the bill really well.
I’d have voted for Killing Time or Killy, simply to get them back into print. Kinds of Love Kinds of Death, or Murder Among Children would work, though as straight-up murder mysteries, they might have stuck out a bit. (Still, that’s basically what The Expendable Man is, and it’s rather prim to be a crime novel in the strict sense).
I think it comes down to Stark being such an important voice in crime fiction in the 60’s, and inspiring a number of influential films, even if none of them did much box office. I don’t think any of these books were out of print. So that wasn’t a priority here.
Westlake said Stark outsold him in the Mid-Late 60’s, and I’ve always wanted to hear the precise tone of voice he used when he said that out loud. 😉
I agree about those early Westlakes—they certainly meet the criteria for this LOA entry. I’m looking forward to re-reading them. Some of them did get recognition from Hard Case Crime, which I think is just as impressive as LOA. Maybe HCC will publish more of them.
I’m honestly puzzled about why Killing Time, which must have sold decently well, given all the past editions, has gone entirely out of print, not even an ebook. Latest edition is 1988, and that’s from Spain. (Where it had three editions). Granted, Tim Smith isn’t sexy, his girlfriend isn’t a knockout (though he was nuts not to take her very sensible advice and run for the hills with her).
Westlake was writing flat-out Noir in the early-mid 60’s, under his own name. Tim Smith is self-evidently a take on the Continental Op, but the Op stories aren’t noir, they’re classic hardboiled–basically defining and to some extent re-inventing the form, though there were a few earlier examples that nobody reads now. Tim wants to be hardboiled, but he can’t quite make it. That’s why it’s Noir. I think it’s perceived by some as a failed attempt to imitate Red Harvest, when in fact it’s a successful attempt to revise it. “What if you tried doing this turn the different factions against each other in real life, in your own community?” It’s dark as hell, darker in fact than any of the Stark novels, since Stark is a romantic, and Parker can’t die.
Hmmm. Might be a quick squib of an article in this. Let me think. If I can stop obsessing over the fan fiction a while.
That’s the one I’d have picked. Oh well.
A propos, it might interest you to know I just published a book about Donald Westlake’s film adaptations. It’s called “Flickering Capers: Donald Westlake on Film”. Hereunder a link to the Relevant AMazon page and to a review of the book:
I shall peruse, and very possibly discuss it here, even if I have to pay for my review copy. I pretty nearly always do, so nothing new there–just got the kindle edition. I’ve been busy with another project, but I really should keep my hand in here.
It is faintly possible I may not 100% agree with you about all the adaptations in question. It’s a subject I am highly opinionated about–as was Mr. Westlake. But wouldn’t that be so much more diverting? Keep an eye out. Shouldn’t take me more than a few weeks.
Thanks for your prompt reply. If I may suggest, read the PDF I sent your rather than the Kindle edition, I am still trying to debug it and at the moment looks pretty ugly…
And I don’t mind contrary opinions – I am opinionated but not authoritative 🙂
I don’t see a PDF–haven’t downloaded the ebook yet. Heading out now, so won’t be able to respond for a bit. I’ve noticed some Kindle editions can have a lot of typographical issues, so good luck with that.
.. emailed it to you separately.
I didn’t get it.
oh, I replied to the email I got. Do you have a personal email I can send it to?
I saw two links in your first email, one to the Amazon page, and one to The Venetian Vase. No links in the other two. Maybe the PDF got filtered out for some reason? Was there a third link? I tend to avoid posting my email online. My primary email is linked to this blog, so not sure giving you that addy is going to help.
This time it was in the email, and works, so I deleted your post. I will get around to it, though I do a lot of my reading with my Kindle during my commute, at lunch, etc. So might take longer this way. I’ll try with the phone, see how that works.
…on the phone is probably where it looks better;)
Looking at the ebook, I did see some formatting issues, which I gather is a problem even for some small publishing houses. I don’t have Adobe on my phone, though, and it’s an old one, getting a mite full in there.
Leaving that aside, based on my reading to date I have a suggestion–maybe don’t say a guy who published over a hundred short stories in his life published ‘several’ of them? That’s really where Westlake began as a writer, in the pulps, and the pulps were short stories and the occasional novella/novelette.
There’s a very good bibliography on the Official Westlake Blog maintained by his family.
Westlake’s writing career was incredibly busy and varied. At times, I think only P.G. Wodehouse rivals him there, at least in the English speaking world. Another very influential wordsmith who never got much in the way of critical respect. Because he was too funny to take seriously. But today, we remember him for a small sliver of what he produced, and to some extent the same is true of Westlake.
It’s an easy fix, about the short stories, and I would strongly suggest you make it. Your readership is going to be largely aficionados, and that’s gonna stick out. Scrap ‘several’. Immediately.