Levine

by Donald E. Westlake

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812510542
• ISBN13: 9780812510546
• Release Date: January 1985
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A very different Westlake character

For a crime writer who mixed humour as Donald Westlake and violent crime as his alter ego pen name Richard Stark, this book of short stories about an aging NY detective with a heart problem (Abe Levine of the title) provides a very different orbit. The book comprises several short stories written for crime magazines between 1959 and 1965 with a new closing short story written in 1984 when the book was complied for the excellent Mysterious Press Bookshop in New York. It should fascinate Westlake fans for a number of reasons. The first is it gives an insight of early Westlake writing efforts when he was still developing his overall writing and storytelling styles. After the late 1960s he had pretty well dropped the short story format with only a few later exceptions. Secondly, one suspects (as admitted in his 1984 written "Introduction"), Westlake found writing these stories that were so different to his normal fare a challenge and they held a special place for him. No wise cracks, no focus on hard boiled criminals but instead a world weary and experienced NY detective, with the emphasis on each tale covering repetitious day to day police work of a variety of cases while Levine frets about his health and the effect of the job on his heart problems. Westlake wisely recognised that Levine was never going to be a Dortmunder or Parker and so never merited a full novel. His later attempts writing as Tucker Coe about an ex-cop Mitch Tobin did not have any great success and the character was not a Levine in any case. The author's soft spot for these short stories seems to be just because they were so different and the frailties of the lead character. Indeed the twist in each story of Levine acting out of the norm expected in doing his duty is what makes them so well suited to the short story format. A unique one off offering from a great crime writer.