Posts Tagged: Donald Westlake

Max Allan Collins: The Grandmaster Speaketh

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According to Otto Penzler, the Grand Master Speaketh too long, actually, in accepting his “Edgar” at the banquet last Thursday at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York. I told Otto that maybe I should have dropped the thank you that I gave him for publishing the Mike Hammer short story collection recently. The banquet found me dressed in my James Bond Halloween costume. I was in great company – not only my wife Barb, but my agent Dominick Abel, Barbara Allan’s editor Michaela Hamilton (whose guests we were), Lee Goldberg and Joel Goldman of Brash Books, and Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime, among others. We had ringside seats, and were right there to helplessly watch M.C. Jeffrey... more

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There’s No Such Thing as Noir Lite

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Not so long ago, I did something I really didn’t want to do: I watched the movie Precious.  Lord knows I’d tried to avoid it; critical acclaim or no, any film about a poor, obese, teenage black girl growing up as the live-in slave of an equally obese, abusive, welfare-queen mother has to be the cinematic equivalent of root canal surgery, right?  Why would I ever want to subject myself to that kind of misery? Well, surprise, surprise — the film was brilliant.  Well written, smartly directed, and performed by a cast of actors deserving of every accolade and award nomination it received.  In short, I’m glad I saw the movie. But yeah, sitting through it was a living... more

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