WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN?

by Rob Lopresti

Back in 1987 there was a mystery conference in New Jersey. I don’t remember the exact title but it amounted to a salute to Otto Penzler and to the Mysterious Press, which he had founded, and which had changed the entire field of mystery publishing.

There were the usual panels in the morning and afternoon, but at lunch time all of the attendees would sit down to meals with the participants, in randomly selected bunches. I slipped into the room early and de-randomized one table, so that I got to sit with Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Timothy J. Culver, and Donald E. Westlake. Don’t worry. That left room for several others, because all those people are Donald E. Westlake.

And, alas, they all died on the last day of 2008, apparently of a heart attack, in Mexico. Which is why I have borrowed today’s title from the title of one of his books.

First encounters

When I was a kid I used to read those wonderful paperbacks with titles like Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories To Make You Stay Up All Night and Be Late For School. One of them featured a story I never forgot, called “Come Back, Come Back.” It was a brilliant little tale of a cop who was waiting to find out if he had heart disease, and trying to convince a wealthy, healthy young businessman not to jump off the ledge of a building. The ironic contrast and the suspense were dazzling to my — what? twelve year old? — psyche.

Only many years later did I realize that that was my first exposure to Don Westlake. It was completely uncharacteristic of his work except in its high quality.

Jump ahead to high school when I worked as a page in the public library. (Yes, even back then I knew what I wanted to do with my life…pathetic, huh?) I saw some books in the mystery section with funny covers and titles. The Spy In The Ointment. God Save The Mark. The Busy Body. And so I rediscovered Westlake.

The lord of chaos

He once said that his subject was bewilderment. I would respectfully disagree; his finest work was the detailed observation of chaos. This could be done seriously or hilariously. The discovery of a corpse in Somebody Owes Me Money is one of the funniest bits of chaos I have ever read.

And speaking of Westlake’s weird ability to bring the funny and the serious, he is the only writer I know who arguably achieved his greatest fame parodying himself. Because his great character Dortmunder is, after all, a comic doppelganger of the ultra-serious Parker, created by his alter ego Richard Stark.

On that long ago day when I had lunch with Westlake I asked him who he would like to play Dortmunder. (The lovably unlucky thief with hangdog looks has been — bizarrely — played by Robert Redford, George C. Scott, Paul leMat, Christopher Lambert, and Martin Lawrence.) He suggested Harry Dean Stanton, which made a lot more sense.

A Caribbean mystery

I also had the chance to tell him he had written one of the funniest non-fiction books I have ever come across. Under An English Heaven is the tale of the invasion of the tiny Caribbean island of Anguilla by 315 British paratroopers after the island split off from the sort-of country the U.K.had cobbled together when it decided to stop having colonies. Westlake’s thesis was that, since Anguilla really wanted to be a colony again, the moment the first British soldier set foot on the sand, the Anguillans had won. (His other thesis was that everyone involved was nuts, but that’s his view on almost everything.)

Here is Westlake happily reporting on an incident from this true story: “It was perhaps inevitable on Anguilla that if things were to turn ugly it would happen at a beauty contest. St. Kitts [the center of the proposed country], in a lunatic attempt to build enthusiasm among the populace for the fast-approaching Statehood Day, had created a beauty contest to choose a Statehood Queen — or Miss Associated State, nobody was quite clear about the title … at The Valley Elementary School….

“The police decided to disperse the demonstrators with tear gas, without first checking to see which way the wind was blowing. It was blowing toward the school. The tear gas dispersed the demonstrators and then drifted over to the school and dispersed the audience and then drifted up on stage and dispersed the beauty queens. End of beauty contest. End of first incident, with beauty queens diving headfirst out of windows.”

But seriously

One of Westlake’s best books, and his most serious critique of American society, was a novel called The Ax, which was about the last recession and should either be required reading or banned outright during this one. The hero of the book is laid off from his job, and unable to find work, so he picks his dream job and plans to kill the guy who has it. But — and here is the brilliant part — he first intends to kill everyone who is better qualified for the position than he is.

The most memorable section of the book is a minor subplot in which the hero uses his newfound pessimistic view of the world to rescue his son from a run-in with the law. It is chilling stuff.

Love letters

When I edited the book Thurber on Crime I suspected I knew just the right man to produce a Forward for it. He agreed to do — and gently corrected my spelling of Foreword. “Gentle comedy is the hardest to make work….” he wrote. “What’s funny about a guy who doesn‘t spill the soup in his lap?” Westlake, of course, could do the gentle, quirky stuff or the slapstick with equal grace.

I will write a few more blog entries about the man in the year to come. One will be based on a column I wrote for the late lamented Murderous Intent Mystery Magazine on his use of characters’ names. I sent him a copy when it came out and he sent back a thank you note and pointed out a few name usages I had missed.

Now that he’s gone I am glad I sent him those few fan notes over the years. I almost put in my list of resolutions last week “Write more fan letters.” Let this blog entry serve as one more.