Well, I did it. I sucked it up and pushed “SEND” and my article, “100 Eyes of the Mystery Scene Era” whisked it way to MS editor Kate Stine for inclusion in its 100th issue, which should be at fine newstands and bookstores even as I type. (It’s also available at the MS website, of course, where every back issue sold will result in a $5 donation to the New Orleans Public Library.)
When Kate first announced MS was approaching its landmark 100th issue, she asked us regular contributors to think of various ways to mark the occasion. Originally, I thought of just doing a column, listing 100 eyes who made their mark during the years MYSTERY SCENE, established in 1985, has been around.
But once I got started I realized that unless I simply presented a dry, meaningless list of names, some sort of commentary was required. And so my simple column grew and grew, until it was too big to be a column. “No prob,” Kate said. “It’s not a column… it’s an article.”
Which suited me. But that was the least of my problems. The real toughie, as Bob Seger put it once, was deciding what to leave in, and what to leave out. I wanted the list to be wide-ranging, including the expected, the unexpected and the inexplicable. Some are personal favorites and a few are guilty pleasures, some are no-brainers and there are even one or two I don’t even particularly like, but can’t in all honesty ignore. But one way or another, for better of worse, they have all bent, folded and mutilated the genre –or otherwise stuck in my craw.
Of course, in any sort of list like this, there’s constant second-guessing. And the uneasy feeling that you’ll somehow forget someone of significance, or change your mind after it’s too late. Plus there’s the fear of unintentionally snubbing the work you truly admire and respect.
It turns out I should have just skipped the second guessing part and proceeded right to the head in the oven stage. Within what must have been mere hours from when Issue #100 hit the streets, the e-mail started coming in. I forgot this guy. Why did I include that guy? How could I? How dare I?
Sigh….
Anyway, being a glutton for punishment — and genuinely interested in your responses — here is the original list.
Most of these characters are from novels, but there are also eyes drawn from film, television, short fiction and comics – and from all over the world.
They’re in alphabetical order, because any other sort of order would surely lead to madness, with their creators’ names in parentheses. And no, I don’t expect everyone – or even anyone – to agree with all my choices, but here they are.
1 Jinx Alameda (Brian Michael Bendis)
This foul-mouthed Cleveland bounty hunter is one of the fiercest gumshoes to ever hit the comic rack—or anywhere else. A night out with her and Max Collins’ Ms. Tree would be fearsome.
2 Fitzroy Maclean Angel (Mike Ripley)
A cat named Springsteen, a taxi called Armstrong, and a pub-ready sense of humor made the screwball capers of this trumpet-playing slacker London cabbie/PI a true joy to read.
3 Andy Barker (Conan O’Brien and Jonathan Groff) Accountant by day, private eye by accident This recent, already doomed sitcom starring Andy Richter had more wit—and genuine affection for the genre—than anything on the tube since Rockford.
4 Ezell “Easy” Barnes (Richard Hilary)
Unjustly forgotten, this African-American eye from Newark bridged the gap between Mr. Shaft and Mr. Rawlins. Hard as nails, but his best buddy was a ditsy transvestite named Angel.
5 Phil Beaumont & Jane Tanner
(Walter Satterthwait) Dashing Pinkerton op and his rookie partner Tanner swapped Thin Man-style banter and conjured up echoes of Hammett. The Dirty Thirties never seemed so much fun.
6 Tom Bethany (Jerome Doolittle)
Vietnam vet, and former Olympic-class amateur wrestler, CIA op and bush pilot turned quirky PI hanging out at a Harvard Square coffee shop. The missing link between Henry David Thoreau and Mike Hammer.
7 “Bogie” (John Wagner and Alan Grant)
A cheekily subversive UK comic book re-imagined Don Quixote in fedora and trench coat, with all the world as his windmill.
8 Burke (Andrew Vachss)
The avenging saint of NYC’s abused children. As relentless, deadly, and humorless as a shark. The Big Apple never seemed so rotten.
9 Vincent Calvino (Christopher G. Moore)
A transplanted New York shamus is our man in Bangkok, doing the ex-pat shuffle. This is the world calling.
10 Lydia Chin & Bill Smith (S.J. Rozan)
She’s young and Asian-American. He’s not. But, together or separately, what a team!
11 Frank Clemons (Thomas H. Cook)
A bleak trilogy featuring an Atlanta cop turned NYC eye captured perfectly all the crushed romanticism and world-weariness of Chandler—and upped it. Sad and beautiful.
12 Elvis Cole (Robert Crais)
When nobody was looking, this goofball baby boomer unexpectedly morphed into one of the finest PIs of the rock’n’roll generation. No more jazz—this was the real deal, and his first name was the tell.
13 Timothy Cone (Lawrence Sanders)
This rumpled dick worked for a Wall Street firm specializing in corporate hanky-panky. And nobody ever did hanky-panky better than Sanders.
14 John Francis Cuddy (Jeremiah Healy)
Sure, he speaks to his dead wife, but an awful lot of readers listened in. Compelling and compassionate, tough without being a cartoon—and the short stories may be even better than the books.
15 David Cunane (Frank Lean)
Quirky, idealistic and screwed up as hell, this haunted finder of lost children is Jack Liffey’s UK counterpart.
16 Matthew Dain (Christopher Mills)
In just two short stories, Mills created an eye as memorably dark and brooding as the Maine woods he calls home.
17 Vic Daniel (David M. Pierce)
A big goofy Hollywood dick—the Shell Scott for a new generation—with Sara, an adolescent punkette, playing the role of Gal Friday.
18 David DiAngelo (Tim Broderick)
A web comic whose intentionally rough artwork belied the sophistication and compassion of his writing. A shamus takes on those “odd jobs” nobody else wants. “Someday they’ll all be odd jobs.” Take heed.
19 Harry Dobbs & Stella Wynkowski
(Alan Rudolph) Two PIs (Tom Berenger and Elizabeth Perkins) on each other’s case in Love at Large, a savvy, saucy, head-spinning romantic-comedy.
20 Jackson Donne (David White)
Tragedy seems to follow this brooding young PI from Rutgers, but his great battered heart beats on. A series to watch.
21 Sean & Matt Ellis (Benjamin M. Schutz)
The Hardy Boys grow up to become process servers.
22 Lionel Essrog (Jonathan Lethem)
Lethem’s National Book Award-winning Motherless Brooklyn was a bold, noirish literary tour-de-force farce fierce narrated by a detective defective selective with Tourette’s Syndrome. Skimdrome. Skin drum.
23 Buddy Faro (Mark Frost)
This TV romp boasted a Rat Pack-era dick trying to wise up a modern-day LaLaLand that lost its sense of cool long ago.
24 Wesley Farrel (Robert Skinner)
He can pass for white, which comes in handy for this slick nightclub owner and sometimes-private eye in Depression-era New Orleans.
25 Kevin Fitzpatrick (Bill Dodds)
It took contest-winner Dodds a weekend to write O Father, but this zippy novella featuring a Seattle gumshoe with a three-year-old daughter and a thing for Rockford reruns takes a lot longer to forget.
26 Lew Fonesca (Stuart Kaminsky)
Tired, beat-down and downbeat, this gumshoe’s peaceful Florida retirement hasn’t worked out well so far. Lucky for us.
27 Brendan Frye (Rian Johnson)
Teenager Brendan’s mean streets are a high school in the endless Southern California suburban sprawl in Brick. Not to gum it, but this 2005 cult flick managed to channel the spirit of every RKO noir ever made.
28 Pat Gallegher (Richard Helms)
This Big Easy eye and horn player proved self-published didn’t have to suck. Evidently solid storytelling, fresh characters and a razor-sharp sense of place and time help.
29 Chet Gecko (Bruce Hale)
And now, something for the kiddies: a lizard detective, plus some of the ripest puns to ever be left out too long in the sun make these books ideal for hip kids—or their parents.
30 Dirk Gently (Douglas Adams)
The reality check stops here, and the giddy interconnectedness of all things soon becomes apparent. If a salmon answers the phone, hang up.
31 Meg Gillis (C.J. Songer)
A refreshing change from most of the female eyes to pop up in the eighties, moody, morose, paranoid Meg was nobody’s Little Miss Sunshine.
32 Gordianus the Finder (Steven Saylor)
Rome, 80 BC. Gordianus is a professional finder, a “consorter with assassins and a professional ferret.” And the glory that was ancient Rome never seemed less glorious… or more familiar.
33 Lew Griffin (James Sallis)
Don’t let all the lofty literary ambitions scare you. This acclaimed series, featuring a New Orleans professor/poet/private eye, kicks ass. It’s just smarter than most about it.
34 René Griffon (Didier Daeninckx)
War is hell. But profitable. A Parisian eye caught in a post-WWI France still reeling from the “war to end all wars” takes note. Bleak, bitter, angry.
35 Aaron Gunner (Gar Anthony Haywood)
He ain’t no Shaft—he’s just a working dick trying to make sense of an L.A. rocked by riots, crack and that old crowd-pleaser: racism. Defiant and unapologetic.
36 Bernie Gunther (Philip Kerr)
Ex-cop Bernie wants to be a good German, but WWII-era Berlin isn’t the best place for it. Still, there’s good money to be made looking for missing Jews. Potent.
37 Leo Haggerty (Benjamin J. Schutz)
Imagine if Spenser was darker, more cynical…and not Superman. This Washington, D.C. eye’s feet of clay may have been his best feature.
38 Maiku Hama (Kaizo Hayashi & Daisuke Tengan)
This Japanese take-off on B-films and crime fiction tosses in martial arts, the Yakuza and a bespectacled, bumbling loser PI who thinks he’s—who else?—Mike Hammer. It’s Hama Time!
39 Max Hamm (Frank Cammuso)
Sure, he’s a pig, but this subversive spin on nursery rhymes and fairy tales is great fun for smart aleck kids of all ages. So those rumors about Snow White are true….
40 Helena Handbasket (Donna Moore)
Crime and PUNishment, writ large. This post-post-everything goofaroo is arguably the best (or at least most unhinged) mystery parody ever.
41 Joe Hannibal (Wayne D. Dundee)
Neo-Spillane, transferred to the Midwest, boasting a wild, rough energy and two-fisted swagger that hits the spot. Ya got a problem with that, bub?
42 Wil Hardesty (Richard Barre)
The surfer dude as angst-ridden PI. Personal tragedy? Catch the wave.
43 Art Hardin (Robert E. Bailey)
Presenting the family man as detective, marked by an earth-bound domesticity and the author’s quirky, distinctive voice, but the PI stuff is never skimped on.
44 Harding (John Wessel)
A disgraced former PI from Chicago (those convictions for manslaughter are a real turn-off for clients) tries to scrape by, working under the table. Nasty, nasty, nasty.
45 Stanley Hastings (Parnell Hall)
“Private investigator” Hastings works for an ambulance-chasing NYC lawyer, but he hasn’t got a clue. Fortunately, he has a smart wife.
46 Tamara Hayle (Valerie Wilson Wesley)
A black single mom works as a PI and takes no guff, while raising a son. Breezy, sassy and smart.
47 Jack Herriman (Ed Brubaker)
One-eyed Jack’s a San Francisco shamus in an intriguing 1999 comic mini-series from DC/Vertigo that parlays just the right Chandleresque mix of cynicism and vulnerability into a tough-minded tale of loss and redemption, revenge and forgiveness.
48 Tom Hickey (Ken Kuhlken)
The Loud Adios, which introduced Hickey, is a modern classic, a vivid slice of border town malaise set in a WWII-era San Diego primed for Nazi invasion.
49 Nate Hollis (Gary Phillips)
Slick as spit, big-shouldered Hollis walks the walk and talks the talk in the Angeltown comics, taking on a star-studded scandal that could rip the roof off post-Rodney King L.A.
50 Jeri Howard (Janet Dawson)
Rising out of the glut of post-Grafton/Paretsky private janes, this Bay Area gumshoe soon proved herself a determined, shrewd—and popular—sleuth.
51 Morgan Hunt (Geoffrey Norman)
A backwoods version of Travis McGee. There were many pretenders to JDM’s throne, but Norman came closer than most.
52 Cal Innes (Ray Banks)
The PI as screw-up seems to be a developing trend, with the UK grabbing more than its share. Manchester’s Innes is self-destructive, cynical and doesn’t give much of a damn anymore. Bleak, but also oddly uplifting.
53 Matt Jacob (Zachary Klein)
Another screw-up. This former social worker/slacker’s low rent, smoke-filled escapades made for some most excellent adventures. He lost his ambitions, but not his ideals. Inhale.
54 Milan Jacovich (Les Roberts)
Cleveland rocks in this unapologetically working class series. Say it loud, he’s Slovenian and he’s proud.
55 Kemal Kayankaya (Jakob Arjourni)
Seedy, modern day Frankfurt, and it’s not easy for a Turkish detective raised by German foster parents and forever caught between two solitudes. The perpetual outsider looks in.
56 Mike Kellerman
(“Kellerman, PI: Part One,” story by Julie Martin, Tom Fontana; teleplay by Joy Lusco, and “Kellerman, PI: Part Two,” story by Eric Overmyer, Tom Fontana; teleplay by Sean Whitesell. Homicide.) The best TV eye of the last 20 years. After a long, slow, career crash-and-burn on the classic cop drama Homicide, Detective Mike Kellerman (Reed Diamond) returned as a PI doing dodgy domestics on two bleak, heart-breaking episodes.
57 Patrick Kenzie & Angela Gennaro
(Dennis Lehane) Ambitious and angry, these books lashed out, as fierce and unapologetic in their own way as an abusive husband after a few beers. Oh, the irony.
58 Kidd (John Camp aka John Sandford)
Finally, a PI who knows how to turn on a computer. This hacker’s no geek, either—he’s actually kinda cool, a sort of Paladin of the cyber age. Have mouse will travel.
59 Louis Kincaid (P.J. Parrish)
A beat-down former Detroit cop of mixed race heads home to the South, and finds trouble everywhere he goes.
60 Dan Kruger (Michael Cormany)
A Gen X sex, drugs, and a rock’n’roll eye from Chicago trying not to die before he got old. Imagine if Paul Westerberg wrote mysteries.
61 Joe Kurtz (Dan Simmons)
This Buffalo ex-con private eye is the star of several stark, ballsy thrillers that never—ever—let up.
62 Meg Lacey (Elisabeth Bowers)
A Vancouver PI raising two kids alone takes on child pornography and sexual abuse in Ladies’ Night, an unflinching feminist PI classic.
63 Lauren Laurano (Sandra Scoppettone)
Supposedly the first mainstream hardcover lesbian private eye, but it’s Laurano’s sense of her Greenwich Village neighborhood (and humor) that make this series really stand out.
64 Tru Lewis (Robert Randisi)
“Mature Male in Sixties Available for House-sitting, Non-Smoker, No Pets, Widower.” A PI-by-chance makes house calls in a series of charming short stories. When’s the novel, Bob?
65 Jack Liffey (John Shannon)
Pound for pound, Shannon’s the best current Los Angeles PI writer around, and Liffey the true successor to Dan Fortune. He’s looking for lost children in an L.A. presented warts and all, neighborhood by neighborhood. Now is the time for your tears.
66 Lomax (Paula Milne)
Die Kinder—not a Bruce Willis flick—was the best PI series PBS ever imported. An American ex-pat (Frederic Forrest) in Hamburg finds himself up against a gang of terrorists suspected of a 20-year old department store bombing.
67 Xavier Lombard (Eric Leclere)
The Lost Son re-imagined Andrew Vachss’ Burke as a disgraced Parisian cop living in London, on the trail of an international gang of child molesters. The film, starring Daniel Auteuil, wasn’t bad either.
68 Ed Loy (Declan Hughes)
Ross Macdonald and Ken Bruen walk into a bar in Dublin, and Ed Loy staggers out with a box full of family secrets. Heartache spoken here.
69 Bubba Mabry (Steve Brewer)
Down the mean streets of Albuquerque a Bubba must go…. Light, but satisfying.
70 Declan “Mac” MacManus (D. Daniel Judson)
Mac’s brooding, depressed and self-destructive, and possibly the most likable character in this bleak series. A beautifully rendered wallow.
71 John March (Peter Spiegelman)
This tightly wound scion of a Wall Street dynasty doesn’t have to work—but he must. Angst? He’s got more issues than a newsstand.
72 Philip E. Marlow (Dennis Potter)
The Singing Detective was an all-singing, all-dancing fever dream meditation on art and creativity, pulp fiction and Cole Porter, love and death, and the heartbreak of psoriasis. Smart, savage and heartbreaking. And great television.
73 Veronica Mars (Rob Thomas)
Nancy Drew re-imagined for the iPod generation, with hormones and Oh! What a mouth on her! Sassy!
74 Sam McCain (Ed Gorman)
Small town, Iowa. The 1950s. What could be wrong? Lawyer, private eye, and decent-enough guy McCain knows the black heart that belies the rosy glow of Happy Days nostalgia.
75 Adrian Monk (Andy Breckmann)
Like it or not, this cross between Columbo and Rain Man is the current face of small screen private eyes. Now if only if wasn’t so, so…uh, Monkish?
76 Ivan Monk (Gary Phillips)
The revolution might not be televised, but you can catch a glimpse in this politically charged series about a South Central shamus who runs a one-man agency…and a donut shop. Right on.
77 Tess Monaghan (Laura Lippman)
A former Baltimore reporter finds a new life as a PI. She wanted to be hardboiled but, to paraphrase Jessica Rabbit, she just wasn’t drawn that way.
78 “Ford” Morgan & Roy Shepherd
(Michael Collins) Collins’ last crime novel, The Cadillac Cowboy, was a literary tour-de-force, an unflinching look at two “eyes”—more alike than either would ever admit—on a collision course.
79 Charlie “Bird” Parker (John Connolly)
He sees dead people. Sometimes they talk to him. Imagine if Chandler and Stephen King had a love child.
80 Gay Perry & Harry Lockhart
(Shane Black) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was the big dumb buddy action flick for people too smart for big dumb buddy action flicks—and that definitely includes writer/director Black, who had way more fun skewering himself than anyone expected.
81 Stephanie Plum (Janet Evanovich)
Screwball characters, raging hormones and more carnal naughtiness than Shell Scott could ever imagine.
82 “Le poulpe”
(Jean-Bernard Pouy, Patrick Raynal, and Serge Quadruppani, plus a cast of hundreds) It shouldn’t have worked, but this collective pulp experiment about a hardboiled French gumshoe now numbers over 200 volumes—and almost as many writers. And yes, the pun in the hero’s name is intentional.
83 Rafferty (W. Glenn Duncan)
There were enough varmints and rascals to keep this freewheeling, Spenseresque cowboy spinning his tall tales and kicking butt for six PBOs, all of them worth tracking down.
84 Precious Ramotswe
(Alexander McCall Smith) A “traditionally built” cheerful young entrepreneur from Botswana sets up The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and become her country’s first female detective. Even a crank like me can find no other word for this series: charming.
85 Easy Rawlins (Walter Mosley)
Easy, a black man, defiant but pragmatic, struggles to survive in an ever-changing Los Angeles that spans WWII to the present, and zeroes in on not just issues of race but of politics, culture, morality and honor. A sort of alternative social history.
86 Jack Reacher (Lee Child)
This ex-military wanderer is always willing to help a friend—or take out an enemy. Lack of confidence is not an issue.
87 Mitch Roberts (Gaylord Dold)
Wichita, Kansas, the late fifties and all this small-time peeper (and haunted WWII vet) wants to do is watch baseball, play chess, fish, read and forget. But the simple life ain’t so simple….
88 Dave Robicheaux (James Lee Burke)
Not a PI, at least officially, but this Louisiana cop apparently doesn’t know it. Poetic as hell and spooky as the dawn mist hovering over the bayou. Is it the booze or does he really see dead people?
89 Dan Roman (Edward Mathis)
Lew Archer in a cowboy hat, sure, but there’s more, much more to this brooding, philosophical eye—a sense of loss as big as all of Texas.
90 Harry Ross (Robert Benton and Richard Russo)
Twilight (1998) was the unofficial—but logical—sequel to Harper and The Drowning Pool, with Paul Newman playing essentially the same character, older but not necessarily wiser. Imagine if Ross Macdonald had written The Long Goodbye.
91 Jack Ross (Bernard Schopen)
Disillusioned, brooding Reno, Nevada private eye and bail bondsman tries to lose himself in the big silence of the desert, but fails. Powerful, literate and disturbing.
92 Vincent Rubio (Eric M. Garcia)
Private eye and undercover dinosaur, as hardboiled as foam rubber gets. What has Eric been smoking?
93 Hector Belascoarán Shayne
(Paco Ignacio Taibo II) A one-eyed Mexico City gumshoe in a surreal dish of politics, sociology, history and mythology. Well worth a trip south of the border.
94 Nick Stefanos, Derek Strange & Terry Quinn (George Pelecanos)
Nick is Greek, Strange is black, and Quinn’s a Mick. Together and separately, they try to set the world (or at least Washington, D.C.) right in an ambitious series of sprawling interconnected novels. Powerful and political and never less than personal.
95 Sally Sullivan & Bernie Fox
(Chris Haddock) A Vancouver waitress turned gung ho novice gumshoe had two kids to feed and a rascal of a boss (Stuart Margolin to please in this witty Canadian sitcom from the creator of DaVinci’s Inquest.
96 John Swan (John Swan)
This dark horse of a gumshoe never met an angle he didn’t try to play. Or a friend that he could trust. Canuck noir as hard and cold as it gets.
97 Jack Taylor (Ken Bruen)
The screw-up PI, Irish division. With his finely rendered depiction of a world of dark hurt and a soul in torment, Bruen may just be the genre’s next poet laureate. The darkness isn’t on the edge of town anymore.
98 George Webb (Graham Swift)
Remember when Spade told Brigid he’d wait for her? A Booker Prize-winning author did, and ran with it, conjuring up this long, dark look at the works.
99 Scott Weiss & Jim Bishop
(Andrew Klavan) This full-throttled series about mismatched San Francisco eyes is like a pulp fiction buffet, except that Klavan’s also got a fierce eye for the secret hurts we all carry.
100 Daryl Zero (Jake Kasdan)
In the 1998 flick Zero Effect, Sherlock Holmes (Bill Pullman) gets updated and put in touch with his inner self—only to be revealed as a total whack job. Ben Stiller’s Watson watches, aghast.
Agree? Disagree? You guys know where to find me….
Kevin Burton Smith is the founder and editor of The Thrilling Detective Web Site, an encyclopedic guide to the private eye in fiction. <www.thrillingdetective.com>
Larry himself likes to supplement the written word with pictures and other interesting items. Be sure to read about the “Philatelic Edition” of the latest Keller novel, Hit and Run, in our interview; an example of the specially-printed U.S. stamp is is shown here.
DONALD WESTLAKE, 1933-2008
Monday, January 5th, 2009A sad finale to 2008 came with news of Donald Westlake’s death. Donald Edwin Westlake (July 12, 1933-December 31, 2008) was a giant on the contemporary crime scene, with over a hundred novels and non-fiction books to his credit. He was a three-time Edgar Award winner (1968, Best Novel, God Save the Mark; 1990, Best Short Story, “Too Many Crooks”; 1991, Best Motion Picture Screenplay, The Grifters). In 1993, the Mystery Writers of America named Westlake a Grand Master, the highest honor bestowed by the society. Westlake also wrote the Parker crime novels under the name Richard Stark.
In Mystery Scene’s 2008 Fall Issue #106, Ed Gorman interviewed the author about his work.
DONALD WESTLAKE: THE STARK TRUTH
Levi Stahl, the publicity manager of the University of Chicago Press, has exciting news for Richard Stark fans. “While we don’t reprint many mysteries, we explained to the editorial board that these weren’t just any crime novels, these were regarded as masterpieces…. great novels that have influenced writers around the world. We’re starting with The Hunter, The Man with the Getaway Face and The Outfit but we’re already negotiating for more books in the series.” This means, the Press hopes, that the initial three will be followed in chronological order by the next thirteen Parker novels, ending with Butcher’s Moon, originally published in 1974.
Ed Gorman for Mystery Scene: For all the ferocity of the criminals in the Stark novels, you present a hierarchy based on competence. Strictly Darwinian. There are times when I almost feel sorry for a few of the more feckless ones.
Donald Westlake: Okay, let’s see what we got here. You begin by suggesting the Parker novels are about competence, an idea I like very much. I’ve always said Parker is basically a workman, with the professional workman’s goal of getting the job done ably, efficiently and without interruption. It’s true his job is a dramatic one, but it’s still a job. The only way somebody’s going to be interested in watching a guy take the hinges off a door is if there’s a hundred thousand dollars on the other side.
Gorman: Brian Garfield wrote that you once described Parker as a 1930s Depression character. Then as more European than American. Were you trying to avoid the various hardboiled clichés of the early sixties by thinking of him in these terms?
Westlake: It’s true that Parker comes out of the 30s bank robbers, and I knew in the 60s he was already from another era. The fact is, for a guy in the Midwest in the 30s who had brains and daring but no education and no contacts, crime was one of the very few open career paths. Later on, as other career paths opened up, fewer competent people went in that direction. In that way, he’s an anachronism, but anachronisms have their uses, like chiaroscuro, to highlight the contrasts. Every once in a while in the books, somebody living in our world finds himself in confrontation with this unreconstructed guy from a much harder age. I always like to watch those meetings.
Let me tell you a story about my father. He was a low-pay traveling salesman for much of his life. When I was a kid in Albany, NY, his territory for the various things he sold—you don’t make a living from one item—was eastern Pennsylvania through all of New England except Maine. He’d had a couple of heart attacks and one Friday, in Harrisburg, he felt another one coming on. (There’s no health insurance in this story.) He told the desk clerk he’d stay for the weekend, then bought a bottle of rye and went to bed. Every time he woke up he’d sip a little rye, and Monday morning he woke up hungry and alive. He never told the family until, a few years later, when he was hospitalized with another one, the doctors found the evidence and he admitted to it. That unblinking attitude of just-keep-moving is much of Parker.
Early on, I made a couple mistakes with Parker—socializing him in one way or another—but it was like a cook putting just the wrong thing in a recipe; you could taste it right away. So, as I got to know him better, I stopped making those mistakes. He’s already there; just let him be himself and everything will be fine.
Gorman: Is the story true that you showed a portion of The Hunter to some of your writer friends for their input before you finished it? Did your group back then do that often?
Westlake: I didn’t show The Hunter to anybody for input. I’ve rarely done that with any book. In fact, the only time I can remember doing that was with my first mystery, The Mercenaries, when I wasn’t at all sure what I was doing and I showed the first draft to a writer friend of mine, Larry Harris (who later, for some reason, became Larry Janifer), because I knew he was a good writer and a good editor and far better attuned to the market than I was. He called and said he wanted to come over and talk. When he got to the apartment he had the manuscript box in one hand and a six pack of beer in the other, and he said, “We’re in trouble.” We went through the manuscript, and if there was a beginner’s mistake I hadn’t made I can’t think what it might be. It was a terrific learning experience, and the next draft sold to Lee Wright at Random House, who later became Larry’s editor as well. Otherwise, my first three readers, only when the book is done, are, in order, my wife, my agent and my editor.
Gorman: One critic noted “Westlake has been the mad scientist of crime fiction for nearly 40 years now, and the Stark books showcase some of his more daring experiments with style and structure.” Do you make a conscious decision about approach before you write or do you let the story make the decisions?
Westlake: Story defines the books for two reasons, both because story is what fiction is about and because, since I don’t outline or prepare in any other way, the story is forced to emerge or die. “Narrative push,” as I know you know. Once we have the fuel on board—and then, and then, and then—it’s nice to be able to try different things. Not to get digressive, but to give the story little extras. For instance, in one book I saw I had an opportunity, if I wanted, to tell one section in first person from Parker’s point of view. Since he isn’t someone who tends to want to tell other people anything, particularly anything unnecessary, I wondered if I could do it, what he would sound like, and would it turn out to be one of those false notes. In the event, it was fine. (And no, I can’t right now remember which book.) More recently, in Ask the Parrot, I suddenly realized I could do one chapter from the parrot’s point of view, and that made me very, very happy.
Gorman: You’ve written that you didn’t know how editors let alone readers would react to a hero like Parker. Were you surprised when your editor asked for more?
Westlake: When I wrote The Hunter it was supposed to be a one-off. A difficult unpleasant guy without redeeming qualities bent on revenge. Then Bucklyn Moon, an editor at Pocket Books, said he liked the book and wondered if Parker could escape at the end and me write “three more books a year about him.” (I actually did, the first two years.) I really had to concentrate on that, because Parker was everything a main character in a novel was supposed to not be. The big question was, could I go back to him, knowing he was going to be a series character, meeting the readers again and again, and not soften him. No sidekick or girlfriend to have conversations with, no quirks or hobbies. That was the goal. Somebody who, in a western, would be a lone traveler in the dimness on the other side of the campfire from the hero. Now that menacing but unimportant minor character would be asking for everybody’s attention. No, not asking, assuming.
Gorman: Do you still hear from prisoners commenting on Parker’s skills and offering suggestions for taking care of business?
Westlake: Prisoners used to be readers, but now they’re weightlifters. I used to get letters from guys because they thought they could shoptalk with me, that I wouldn’t moralize or condescend. Techniques and stuff weren’t part of it, but they did have some very nice stories to tell, none of which got directly into any book, though the attitudes show through.
Gorman: There have been so many editions of the Stark books around the world that you might be forgiven for not getting excited each time you see a new one. But given the breadth of the University of Chicago publishing program for the Parkers, you must feel pretty damned proud.
Westlake: I know I should get over being astonished by Parker’s longevity and success, and pretty soon I will. The University of Chicago Press was not a scalp I ever expected to see on my belt. Just to get that 3-D effect, later this month at a comics convention in San Diego, a small outfit is announcing the launch (some day) of Parker graphic novels. (They’ve promised me a T-shirt.) The illustrator, Darwyn Cooke, is hard at work in Canada. When you’ve got the University of Chicago Press and a graphic novel publisher both looking at the same material, the only thing to do is just keep moving on.
Gorman: Finally, the late Bill DeAndrea once quoted you as saying `You don’t know what it’s like to have a pen name who’s doing better than you are.” How do you feel about that today?
Westlake: The issue of being one-upped by your pen name—it isn’t quite the same thing as Evan Hunter, who was just about drowned out completely by Ed McBain, but Stark does tend to outperform Westlake whenever they start even. It happened the first time around, when Point Blank became one of the seminal movies of the twentieth century and Stark was earning more than Westlake, and it’s happened again this time around. I am very glad I don’t have to figure that out.
Ed Gorman’s latest novel is Sleeping Dogs (St. Martin’s Minotaur). Visit his website at <www.newimprovedgorman.com>.
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