The many magazines, ranging from pulp to slick, that used to serve as both farm teams for writers and lures to readers, with hundreds of short stories every month, don't exist. Most of the doors for new people have been sealed.

Westlake's most famous characters include the hard-boiled criminal Parker (appearing in fiction under the Richard Stark pseudonym) and Parker's comic flip-side John Dortmunder. In 1987 Westlake wrote the teleplay Fatal Confession a pilot for the TV series Father Dowling Mysteries based on the novels by Ralph McInerny. "
Samuel Holt: 4 mystery novels featuring the character of Sam Holt 1986-1989: One of Us is Wrong and I Know a Trick Worth Two of That both 1986; What I Tell You Three Times is False 1987; The Fourth Dimension is Death 1989.

He was a three-time Edgar Award winner one of only three writers (the others are Joe Gores and William L. Donald Edwin Westlake (July 12 1933 – December 31 2008) was an American writer with over a hundred novels and non-fiction books to his credit.