Biography

In his comic crime novel "Jimmy the Kid," a group of thieves stages a kidnapping using a novel by Richard Stark as the basis for their plan. "Richard Stark" is the pseudonym that he publishes dark and gritty crime novels under. In addition, Richard Stark himself appears (briefly) as a character in "Jimmy the Kid.".

Shares his middle name, Edwin, with Stephen King. His own pseudonym, Richard Stark, partially inspired King's pseudonym, Richard Bachman.

When it was discovered that Stephen King had been using the pseudonym Richard Bachman, King turned that story into a novel as well: The Dark Half (1993) is about a writer whose pen name is discovered. In that book, Thad Beaumount uses the pen name "George Stark." Both that name and Richard Bachman are taken from Westlake's pen name, Richard Stark.

In addition to writing nearly 50 novels and a handful of screenplays under his own name, he has written almost 30 novels as "Richard Stark", 4 novels as "Samuel Holt", 5 novels as "Tucker Coe", 1 science-fiction novel and several sci-fi short stories as "Curt Clark", 1 novel as "J. Morgan Cunningham" and 1 novel as "Timothy J. Culver". He used multiple pseudonyms in part to combat skepticism over his rapid rate of writing books, sometimes as many as four a year, his friends said.

His novel "Drowned Hopes" shares a chapter with the novel "32 Cadillacs" by Joe Gores. The chapters are not identical, however, instead presenting the same event from the perspective of the characters in each book. Similarly, Westlake's "Plunder Squad" (a Richard Stark/Parker novel) shares a chapter with Gore's "Dead Skip.".