Westlake speaks out

The Eye Award, given by the Private Eye Writers of America, is the association’s lifetime achievement award. This year, the honor went to Donald Westlake, but unfortunately, he couldn’t be there–and neither could the man who was entrusted with introducing the winner, Max Allan Collins. So no doubt the moment was just a tad more surreal at the Shamus Awards than it needed to be. But for those (like me) who couldn’t attend, Westlake has made both the intro and his speech available on his website. As Westlake explains, the honor came as a bit of a surprise because he didn’t realize he wrote about PIs:

But then I reflected further, and I remembered that in fact there have been private eyes of various sorts in my stories. Usually, they’re about twenty feet behind my guy, running hard and shouting, “Stop that man!”

Still, there they are. I think of Jacques Perly, Hammond Cash, Joe Mulligan, Ken Warren (borrowed from Joe Gores), Amos Klee, James Lawson, Fred Hoffman and, next month, Bart Hosfeld.

And even farther back, come to think of it, in my earliest days as a penman,I did tread the night-time streets disguised as a crime-fighting writer named Tucker Coe, who chronicled the doings of ex-cop sorta private eye Mitch Tobin, but soon enough he left me. He may have thought I was insincere. And even farther back, my second published Westlake novel introduced a smalltown private eye named Tim Smith, who didn’t survive the introduction. But he was there, so I thought maybe I could be legitimately among you after all.

Then I thought even more deeply on the subject, and it occurred to me that the private eye is someone who solves a problem connected with a crime, and of course that is also what my people do. They solve problems connected with a crime.

Whether he’s a “true” PI writer or not, what’s never in doubt is how influential he continues to be, whether writing as himself or as Richard Stark.

(link from The Gumshoe Site)