I senaste numret av VQR skriver James McNally om den produktive Donald Westlake och hans hårdkokta noir-thrillers om antihjälten Parker – skrivna under pseudonymen Richard Stark – som nyligen kommit i snygga nyutgåvor. Den iskalle Parker förekom i dryga tjugotalet böcker och kanske mest känd är “The Hunter” som blev filmerna “Point Blank” (1967) med Lee Marvin, och “Payback” (1999) med Mel Gibson.
“When Donald E. Westlake died on New Year’s Eve, he took a crowd of good men down with him. There were at least fourteen. Maybe more. James Blue. Ben Christopher. Sheldon Lord. Writers, all of them. They wrote science fiction novels and biographies. They wrote soft porn paperbacks and short stories. Westlake had even blurbed one of them. “I wish I had written this book!” he crowed of J. Morgan Cunningham’s novel Comfort Station. But here’s the kicker. He had written the book. He’d written all their books. These men—these writers—they were all Donald E. Westlake. All told, Donald E. Westlake published over a hundred books under various names, including his own, but one pseudonym in particular stood above all the others: Richard Stark.”
Läs: “A Stark World”.
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