Photo: Ulf Andersen/Getty Images (2006)
Sample of authors
Westlake, Donald E.
Donald Edwin Westlake was an American author of Irish descent born in Brooklyn, New York. As a small boy, he moved with his family to Yonkers and later to Albany, New York, where he grew up. He enrolled at the State University of New York, Pittsburgh, in 1949, but dropped out the following year. He attempted to study at two more universities, but only for short periods.
Westlake had a couple of...
Literary figures
Leonard Pine
Gender: Male
Afro-American, physically fit, homosexual Vietnam veteran with an explosive temper. Leonard Pine grew up in the home of an uncle who disapproved of him because of his sexual orientation. He is good friends with his total opposite, the calm, pacifistic Hap Collins with roots in the American working class, and they work together for a detective agency in a long suite of stories filled with...