Donald E. Westlake

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Donald E. Westlake's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    85 Books (1 Series)
  • First Book:
    January 1965
  • Latest Book:
    January 2025
  • Author Rating:
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Full Series List in Order

John Dortmunder

1 - The Hot Rock (May-1970)
2 - Bank Shot (Apr-1972)
3 - Jimmy the Kid (1974)
4 - Nobody's Perfect (1977)
5 - Why Me? (Jan-1983)
6 - Good Behavior (May-1986)
7 - Drowned Hopes (Apr-1990)
7.25 - Give Till It Hurts (Oct-2010)
7.5 - Too Many Crooks (Aug-1996)
8 - Don't Ask (Jul-1994)
9 - What's the Worst That Could Happen? (Jun-1996)
10 - Bad News (Apr-2001)
11 - The Road to Ruin (Apr-2004)
12 - Watch Your Back! (Apr-2005)
13 - What's So Funny? (May-2007)
14 - Get Real (Jul-2009)
Thieves' Dozen (Apr-2004)

Book List in Order: 85 titles

  • The Fugitive Pigeon

    Meet Charlie Poole, a Canarsie bartender, couch potato, and one of the biggest nebbishes in Brooklyn. When two hitmen come after him, he's totally baffled and suddenly on the run. Now Charlie has to learn how to handle his Mafia Uncle Al. (Point w...

  • God Save the Mark

    This Edgar Award winner is a “raucously funny” novel of crime, con artists, and a poor sucker caught in the middle, by the author of the Dortmunder series (Kirkus Reviews).   If there is a scam operating anywhere, sooner or later it will fin...

  • The Hot Rock

    John Dortmunder - 1

    In the novel that spawned the most hilarious criminal caper series ever conceived, John Dortmunder proves he has what it takes to be an habitual offender. Dortmunder steals the same jewel not just once--not just twice--but again--and again--and again...

  • Adios, Scheherazade

  • Bank Shot

    John Dortmunder - 2

    "What the hell is it?" Dortmunder said. "It's a trailer," Kelp said. "What they call a mobile home. Didn't you ever see that kind of thing before?" "But what the hell is it?" "It's the bank," Kelp said. The bank has a tough safe, seven guards, ...

  • Gangway!

  • Jimmy the Kid

    John Dortmunder - 3

    The James Boys, The Chicago Mob, The Corleone Family, And now...The Dortmuunder Gang Brilliant criminal minds--with a few loose parts. Hardened men and women-who couldn't bump off a cockroach. You'll remember their wacko exploits from HOT ROCK a...

  • Brothers Keepers

    "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," confessed Brother Benedict of Manhattan's Crispinite Order. And that was before the 19-year lease on the order's Park Avenue monastery had expired, pitting its sixteen monks against a greedy real-estate mogul wh...

  • The Ultimate Caper

    in Murderous Schemes

    When plotting a murder (figuratively speaking), the mystery writer has at hand any number of M.O.'s including such tried and true conventions as the locked room, the unbreakable alibi, the double bluff, the mistaken identity, and many others. Indeed,...



  • Dancing Aztecs

    Jerry Manelli is a hustler. A specialist in the scam, the con, and the rip-off. Right now Jerry Manelli is on the move around Greater New York City, hot on the trail of a priest. A very special sort of priest. A thousand-year-old, two-foot-tall, ugl...

  • Nobody's Perfect

    John Dortmunder - 4

    Dortmunder and company are off again in pursuit of the Big Score--hired by one Arnold Chauncev to heist a priceless oil painting from his fashionable Manhattan town house. The scheme is foolproof: Chauncev collects from the insurance company, pays...

  • Castle in the Air

    The Italian Job meets Ocean’s Eleven in “the kookiest  . . . craziest” crime caper ever written by crime fiction Grandmaster Donald Westlake (New York Times). Four teams of international thieves race through Paris to steal a king’s ran...

  • A Spy in the Ointment

    The three-time Edgar Award"winning Grand Master of Mystery serves up a dangerous case of mistaken identity in “the best spy comedy I have ever read” (The New York Times).   J. Eugene Raxford is not what anyone would call a debonair man of ...

  • Killing Time

  • Kahawa

    The Word KAHAWA is Swahili for Coffee, In English it means... Adventure novels don't have to be rigorously written in order to be enjoyable. But when Donald E. Westlake brings his considerable talents to bear on the form, it is astonishing how...

  • A New York Dance

  • Why Me?

    John Dortmunder - 5

    Having unsuspectingly lifted the hottest rock in town, John Dortmunder is the prey of the FBI, the New York City police, terrorist groups from three nations, and all of New York's petty and not-so-petty crooks...

  • Levine

  • A Likely Story



  • High Adventure

    One man’s quest to make history -- and a lot of money: “High entertainment” from the three-time Edgar Award"winning Grand Master of Mystery (Elmore Leonard).   Kirby Galway may be a low-level marijuana smuggler in Belize, but the man has...

  • Good Behavior

    John Dortmunder - 6

    Its never been easy for John Dortmunder, hut things had now taken a turn he could never prepare for: Escaping from the police across a block of New York rooftops, he literally falls through the roof of the convent of the Silent Sisterhood of St. Filu...

  • Enough

    "A Travesty" follows the antics of movie critic Carey Thorpe who after accidently killing his girlfriend plays all the roles in the classic detective story, and "Ordo" is a character study of a man faced with an astonishing event from his past...

  • Transylvania Station

  • Busy Body

    Aloysius Engel, a middle-echelon gangster newly promoted to be assistant to the "Big Man," is instructed to retrieve hidden drugs from a new grave, but finds only an empty coffin and begins a ghoulish chase after the missing corpse...

  • High Jinx

  • Trust Me on This

    What would it take to lure a serious young newswoman from a respectable New England paper to the most notorious supermarket tabloid in America? The call of journalistic adventure? The siren song of intrigue? How about the promise of a salary that's t...

  • Sacred Monster

    Jack Pine was born to be a Hollywood star. He has no morals, no scruples; he will not hesitate to do anything or love anyone if it might advance his career, get him the best roles, or project him ever more firmly into the spotlight. And success do...

  • Help I Am Being Held Prisoner

    JAILED FOR A JOKEIt isn't easy going to jail for a practical joke. Of course, this particular joke left 20 cars wrecked on the highway and two politicians' careers in tatters - so jail is where Harold Künt landed. Now he's just trying to keep a low ...

  • Tomorrow's Crimes

    The author of original and literate suspense novels, Westlake excels also at creating mystery adventures in science-fiction settings. The selections in this volume, nine short stories and a book-length story, Anarchaos , originally appeared in SF mag...



  • Two Much

    A ruse to bed a pair of twins quickly grows complicated

    Art doesn’t mean to tell Liz Kerwin that he has a twin. He’s on Fire Island, and she’s so beautiful that he’s willing to say anything for a chance at getting ri...

  • The Damsel

    Donald E. Westlake is one of the greats of crime fiction. Under the pseudonym Richard Stark, he wrote twenty-four fast-paced, hard-boiled novels featuring Parker, a shrewd career criminal with a talent for heists. Using the same nom de plume, West...

  • The Dame

    Donald E. Westlake is one of the greats of crime fiction. Under the pseudonym Richard Stark, he wrote twenty-four fast-paced, hardboiled novels featuring Parker, a shrewd career criminal with a talent for heists. Using the same nom de plume, Westl...

  • Drowned Hopes

    John Dortmunder - 7

    Arriving home at dawn after another failed burglary, John Dortmunder is horrified to find his apartment occupied by an old cellmate everyone had supposed (and hoped) had been jailed for life. Tom Jimson needs Dortmunder's help. Thirty years ago, b...

  • The Blackbird

    Donald E. Westlake, writing as Richard Stark, offers the third Alan Grofield novel of suspense. Grofield is a part-time actor, but the rest of the time he's a thief. But in this advernture, no one is giving Grofield the privilege of being asked if he...

  • The Mercenaries // The Cutie

    Hard Case Crime - 53

    SOME PEOPLE WILL DO ANYTHING FOR MONEY Mavis St. Paul had been a rich man's mistress. Now she was a corpse. And every cop in New York City was hunting for the two-bit punk accused of putting a knife in her. But the punk was innocent. He'd been ...

  • Mystery for Halloween

    This collection of sixteen haunting tales--selected by the editors of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine--calls forth the shivers and suspense that make Halloween a truly blood-red- letter day. Authors include Don...

  • Humans

    God has had it. He's embarrassed, sick, and disgusted. As far as God is concerned, it's no more Mr. Nice Guy: he's sending his best angel, Ananayel, to put those whining, petulant, overbreeding humans out of business for good. But even the end of ...

  • The Mercenaries

    Westlake's other crime novels include The Hunter, The Seventh and Busy Body, all of which were made into major motion pictures. The Mercenaries, Westlake's fist novel, is a riveting New York gangster thriller with a narcotic twist. This tough mystery...

  • Cops and Robbers

    The Grand Master of Mystery delivers “nerve-end-entertainment” when two of New York’s finest set out to become two of New York’s richest (Kirkus Reviews).   Tom and Joe have been walking the beat on the mean streets of the Big Apple long...



  • Don't Ask

    John Dortmunder - 8

    BONE OF CONTENTION It's not just any bone. It's a femur. An 800-year-old femur. An 800-year-old femur of a 16-year-old girl who Lust happened to have been killed and eaten by her own family. Then the Church made her a Saint. Then John Dortmunder s...

  • Baby, Would I Lie?

    Welcome to Branson, Missouri, home of Country Music USA, big hairdos, and phony snakeskin boots. Ray Stevens and Cristy Lane are the headliners, but you bet-ter get there early because the late show's at eight. Now the most popular show in Branson is...

  • Killy

  • Smoke

    Poof! One minute Freddie Urban Noon was a burglar, a gentleman, and a liar. The next he was something else. Invisible. It all started in a secret research lab where two scientists were getting rich proving that cigarettes are good for you. Then Fr...

  • What's the Worst That Could Happen?

    John Dortmunder - 9

    TRUMPED! Don't cross Dortmunder. Not even if you're a billionaire tycoon. Especially if you're a billionaire tycoon. Because Dortmunder has his code of honor, and Max Fairbanks, master of the universe, has just crossed over the line. Fairbanks's ...

  • Too Many Crooks

    in 3rd Culprit (Worldwide)
    John Dortmunder - 7.5

    Crime in all its devious incarnations is presented in this treat of murderous morsels dished out by old ppros and promising newcomers. Artfully crafted and impossible to put down, each story bountifully demooonstrates why these authors are la creme d...

  • Pity Him Afterwards

    Hiding in the darkness of the trees, he was waiting for the state police car to move on, but it would not. Red lights filled the road below, flashlights began to search the woods around him. But he would not go back to Doctor Chax. He could take no m...

  • The Ax

    Burke Devore doesn't need a handout, a lecture, or a doting wife. Devore, a decent suburban fellow with twenty-five years of loyal service as a paper mill manager, needs only one thing: work. Soon, with desperation pounding in his soul, Burke Devore ...

  • Take It Away

    in The Plot Thickens

    Joining together for a good cause brings out the best in today's top mystery and suspense writers! For this marvelously entertaining anthology, these outstanding contributors rose to a unique literary challenge: each penned a tale that ingeniously fe...

  • Mystery the American Way



  • A Good Story and Other Stories

  • The Hook

    Whether he is making you laugh with his Dortmunder crime capers or making you shiver with his Parker novels or recent bestseller The Ax, Donald E. Westlake is an unrivaled master of suspense. Now he presents a diabolically clever tale of murder, ambi...

  • Bad News

    John Dortmunder - 10

    "I'm a robber, not a grave robber," John Dortmunder says. So why is he knee-deep in dirt in a Long Island cemetery? It all started when Andy Kelp went into cyberspace and surfed his way into the clutches of master manipulator Fitzroy Guilderpost, wh...

  • Corkscrew

    Bryce Proctor's next novel is due but he has a serious case of writer's block. He also has a greedy wife who wants everything in a divorce settlement. Wayne Prentice is a writer with a manuscript nobody wants. Proctor suggests that the novel be publi...

  • Put a Lid on It

    Shhh! Don't tell anyone that Francis ("Never call me Frank") Meehan is slipping out of jail. And whatever you do, don't tell anyone that the people who are letting him out are bigger crooks than Francis ever was. The deal is: Francis gets out of pris...

  • Money for Nothing

    When it comes to crime-the good, the bad, and the hilarious-nobody does it like Donald E. Westlake, the creator of the uproarious Dortmunder novels and the dark classic The Ax. Westlake's outrageous new thriller is all about something too good to be ...

  • The Road to Ruin

    John Dortmunder - 11

    "Pariah!" Monroe Hall wishes that people would stop using that word. So what if he was born rich but scammed his own conglomerate for more than the boys from Enron and WorldCom combined? And so what if he takes a little pleasure in reporting people t...

  • Thieves' Dozen

    John Dortmunder

    SO MANY HEISTS, SO LITTLE TIME... THIEVES' DOZEN Horse Laugh: Dortmunder always avoids thefts that involve four-legged creatures. Then why is he somewhere out in New Jersey, listening to sirens wailing in the distance, holding on for dear life to...

  • Anarchaos

    An early work by one of Science Fiction's grand masters
    Anarchaos is a planet, inhabited by humans, where anarchy is the only law; where each man protects himself as best he can; and where the weak are soon dead. Malone's brother had dies that way...

  • Watch Your Back!

    John Dortmunder - 12

    In his classic caper novels, Donald E. Westlake turns the world of crime and criminals upside-down: the bad get better, the good get worse, and God save anyone caught between a thief named John Dortmunder and his most improbable plans.It's a long way...

  • 361

    Hard Case Crime - 9

    The men in the tan-and-cream Chrysler came with guns blazing. When Ray Kelly woke up in the hospital, it was a month later, he was missing an eye, and his father was dead. Then things started to get bad. From the mind of the incomparable Donald E. We...

  • I Know a Trick Worth Two of That

    Sam Holt spent years playing Packard, everyone's favorite TV-detective; he's got no desire to play sleuth in real life. But when a long-lost pal calls with a rant about conspiracies, sinister cargo ships and hit men, and then gets poisoned at a party...

  • One of Us Is Wrong

    Actor Sam Holt has packed in Packard, the TV detective he played for several years to much acclaim and lots of money. But success has had its downside: Holt is so closely identified with Packard that he can't get hired to play anyone else. Suddenly, ...

  • What's So Funny?

    John Dortmunder - 13

    In his classic caper novels, Donald E. Westlake turns the world of crime and criminals upside down. The bad get better, the good slide a bit, and Lord help anyone caught between a thief named John Dortmunder and the current object of his intentions. ...

  • Somebody Owes Me Money

    Hard Case Crime - 44

    SOMETIMES WINNING FEELS AN AWFUL LOT LIKE LOSING. Cab driver Chet Conway was hoping for a good tip from his latest fare, the sort he could spend. But what he got was a tip on a horse race. Which might have turned out okay, except that when he wen...

  • Get Real

    John Dortmunder - 14

    In Donald E. Westlake's classic caper novels, the bad get better, the good slide a bit, and Lord help anyone caught between a thief named John Dortmunder and the current object of his attention. However, being caught red-handed is inevitable in Do...

  • Campus Doll

  • Memory

    Hard Case Crime - 64

    THE CRIME WAS OVER IN A MINUTE - THE CONSEQUENCES LASTED A LIFETIME Hospitalized after a liason with another man's wife ends in violence, Paul Cole has just one goal: to rebuild his shattered life. But with his memory damaged, the police hounding hi...

  • Give Till It Hurts

    in Christmas At The Mysterious Bookshop
    John Dortmunder - 7.25

    Each year, for the past seventeen years, Otto Penzler, owner of the legendary Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, has commissioned an original story by a leading mystery writer. The requirements were that it be a mystery/ crime/suspense story, that...

  • The Cutie

    SOME PEOPLE WILL DO ANYTHING FOR MONEY Mavis St. Paul had been a rich man’s mistress. Now she was a corpse. And every cop in New York City was hunting for the two-bit punk accused of putting a knife in her. But the punk was innocent. He’d ...

  • Man Hungry

  • The Score

    It was an impossible crime: knock off an entire North Dakota town called Copper Canyon -- clean out the plant payroll, both banks, and all the stores in one night. Parker called it "science fiction," but with the right men (a score of them), he could...

  • The Comedy Is Finished

    BUT SERIOUSLY, FOLKS. The year is 1977, and America is finally getting over the nightmares of Watergate and Vietnam and the national hangover that was the 1960s. But not everyone is ready to let it go. Not aging comedian Koo Davis, friend to ge...

  • Comfort Station

    In the comfort station at Bryant Park, worlds collide and lives are changed forever Look past the grandeur of the famous New York Public Library and you will see the true architectural marvel of Forty-Second Street: the comfort station. A small bu...

  • Ex Officio

    An ailing ex-president attempts to return to the world stage Few retirements are tougher than that of a former president. For more than a decade, the once-powerful Bradford Lockridge, whose presidency was cut short after one term, has slipped furt...

  • The Scared Stiff

    Attempting a worldwide insurance scam in South America, a con artist finds the natives less than friendly After more than a decade of skipping out on their debts, Lola and Barry owe a lot of money to the wrong people. To escape the loan sharks, Ba...

  • The Spy in the Elevator

  • Forever and a Death

    The Bond That Never WasTwo decades ago, the producers of the James Bond movies hired legendary crime novelist Donald E. Westlake to come up with a story for the next Bond film. The plot Westlake dreamed up " about a Western businessman seeking reve...

  • Young And Innocent

    Anita--an innocent, unawakened girl caught up in New Your's smart publishing set ? Lavinia--her older but seductive boss with a reputation for making out with young men, but secretly a lover of girls like Anita ? Barry--who has sworn off females till...

  • The Risk Profession

                                                                                

                                                ...

  • Double Feature

    THE MOVIE STAR AND THE MOVIE CRITIC -- HOW FAR WOULD THEY GO TO KEEP THEIR SECRETS BURIED? DOUBLE FEATURE Contains two CLASSIC Donald E. Westlake novellas, A Travesty and Ordo.WHAT'S HIDDEN BEHIND THE SILVER SCREEN?In New York City, a movie critic ha...

  • Call Me A Cab

    The final unpublished novel by MWA Grandmaster " a wild, romantic road trip across America by taxi cab " demonstrates why this beloved author is so fondly remembered and so dearly missed.“A book by this guy is cause for happiness.”Stephen Kin...

  • The Operator

    Winston, New York--a nice town, a quiet town. Sure, there's corruption, but the streets are clean, everything works, and everyone has what they need. It's a delicate balance, all held together by private investigator Tim Smith, The Operator. Until it...

  • The Actor

    NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTUREDonald E. Westlake's lost masterpiece MEMORY, adapted for the screen as THE ACTOR.“An unsparing look at a man adrift, it's a fitting final dispatch from a master.” -- Time"Terse and bleak and low-key emotional… indelib...

  • Four Pair, Eight Fun Shorts

    • / Science Fiction
    • Buy

    A new collection of eight short stories by four master authors: Donald E. Westlake, H. Beam Piper, Fritz Leiber and Robert Sheckley. And, even though Donald Westlake is best known for his detective novels, all of these stories fall into the category ...

  • They Also Serve

    • / Science Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    He led the way into his quarters, motioned Ebor to a perch, and rang for his orderly. "It was just a little remote-controlled apparatus, of course," he said. "The fledgling attempt, you know. But it circled this Moon here, busily taking pictures, ...

Award-Winning Books by Donald E. Westlake

God Save the Mark
1968 Edgar Allan Poe Award -- Novel


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Donald E. Westlake has published 85 books.

The next book by Donald E. Westlake, The Actor, will be published in January 2025.

The first book by Donald E. Westlake, The Fugitive Pigeon, was published in January 1965.

Yes. Donald E. Westlake has 1 series.
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