Over the course of a fifty-year career, Donald E Westlake published nearly one hundred books, including not one but two long-running series, starring the hard-hitting Parker and the hapless John Dortmunder. This book offers a clear picture of the man behind the books - including his background, experience, and thoughts on his own work.

This anthology gathers the very best of Donald Westlake s nonfiction, including reviews, essays, letters, and interviews, plus a recipe for tuna casserole. Levi Stahl, aficionado of the novels Westlake wrote as Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, and Westlake, was given access to the writer s personal files and chose the most interesting bits, such as a memoir fragment on how Westlake taught himself to write. This is the only collection of nonfiction by the grand master of mystery, who wrote scores of crime novels from 1959 till he died in 2008. Lawrence Block has provided an amusing and revealing foreword."