Donald Edwin Westlake, born on July 12th, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, still alive and kicking.
Westlake didn't get more education than being a junior in Harpur College in Binghamton, NY, who would recently give him a doctorate in letters. He also spent two years at the USAF.
Westlake is a dual and genial writer who has written some of the best black novels under the pseudonym of Richard Stark and some of the funniest ever black novel parodies using his real name (weird, isn't it? fun stuff under real name, serious on pseudonym). Actually, he has also dabbled in science fiction and other genres, but I haven't read them. Lots of his books have been made into movies, including The Hot Rock and Point Blank.
His serious novels often feature the character of Parker, perhaps one of the most professional criminals out and surely the coolest. He parodies Parker in his humoristic novels with Dortmunder, who even once tried copying Parker's methods in Jimmy the Kid, where after reading a fictional Parker novel, he tried pulling the same trick.
Westlake is able to mix quick and hard-hitting prose with a through knowledge of the underground (with a hard bias against cops and the mafia, discussing freelancers) and an ability to make believable (and funny) weirdo situations.
New York is the nearly constant scenario for his novels. On The Fugitive Pigeon there's one of the funniest New York-moments, when the protagonist is being tailed by the FBI and they get lost in New York and he has to go back and find them again. Later on the book, he gives them directions so that they don't have problems following him. In about every of the novels I've read there's some scene which details a particular route or shortcut on New York.
Bibliography
It's quite messy to give up a complete bibliography, as Westlake has used more pseudonyms than I have written and he's a busy fellow. This is an excerpt from his official website.
Novels by Donald E. Westlake
The Mercenaries, 1960
Killing Time, 1961
361, 1962
Killy, 1963
Pity Him Afterwards, 1964
The Fugitive Pigeon, 1965
The Busy Body, 1966 (filmed in 1967)
The Spy in the Ointment, 1966
God Save the Mark, 1967
Who Stole Sassi Manoon?, 1968
Somebody Owes Me Money, 1969
Up Your Banners, 1969
The Hot Rock, 1970 (filmed in 1972)
Adios Scheherezade, 1970
I Gave at the Office, 1971
Bank Shot, 1972 (filmed in 1974)
Cops and Robbers M. Evans, 1972 (filmed in 1973)
Gangway (with Brian Garfield), 1973
Help I Am Being Held Prisoner, 1974
Jimmy the Kid, 1974 (filmed in 1983 and remade in Germany in 1999)
Brothers Keepers, 1975
Two Much, 1975 (filmed The Twin on France, 1984, remade Two Much in 1996)
Dancing Aztecs, 1976 (filmed in France in 1996)
Enough (containing A Travesty (made a cable movie, A slight case of murder in 1999) & Ordo), 1977
Nobody's Perfect, 1977
Castle in the Air, 1980
Kahawa, 1981
Why Me, 1983 (filmed in 1990)
A Likely Story, 1984
High Adventure, 1985
Good Behavior, 1985
Trust Me on This, 1988
Sacred Monster, 1989
Drowned Hopes, 1990
Humans, 1992
Don't Ask, 1993
Baby, Would I Lie?, 1994
Smoke, 1995
What's the Worst That Could Happen?, 1996 (filmed in 2001)
The Ax, 1997
The Hook, 2000
Bad News, 2001
Novels by Richard Stark
The Hunter, later retitled
Point Blank (1967)
because of the movie, later retitled
Payback (1999) because of the other movie, 1962
The Man With the Getaway Face, later retitled
Steel Hit by the English, 1963
The Outfit, 1963 (filmed in 1974)
The Mourner, 1963
The Score later retitled
Killtown by the English, 1963 and filmed
Mise a Sac in
France, 1967
The Jugger, 1965 (filmed in
France as
Made in USA, 1966
The Seventh later retitled
The Split because of the '68 movie, 1966
The Handle later retitled
Run Lethal by the English, 1966
The Rare Coin Score, 1967
The Damsel, 1967
The Green Eagle Score, 1967
The Black Ice Score, 1968
The Sour Lemon Score, 1969
The Dame, 1969
The Blackbird, 1969
Lemons Never Lie, 1971
Slayground, 1971 (filmed in 1984)
Deadly Edge, 1971
Plunder Squad, 1972
Butcher's Moon, 1974
Comeback, 1997
Backflash, 1998
Flashfire, 2000
Novels by Tucker Coe
Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death, 1966
Murder Among Children, 1967
Wax Apple, 1970
A Jade in Aries, 1970
Don't Lie to Me, 1972
Novels by Edwin West
Brother and Sister, 1961
Campus Doll, 1961
Young and Innocent, 1961
Strange Affair, 1962
Other alias
as Curt Clark, one sf novel Anarchaos, 1966
as Timothy J. Culver, one political novel Ex officio, 1970
Westlake, one non-fiction reportage Under an English Heaven , 1972
Written by him and Abby Westlake
High Jinx, 1987
Transylvania Station, 1987
He also wrote a self-named biography of Elizabeth Taylor as John B. Allan in 1962.
Produced screenplays and teleplays
Cops and Robbers, 1973 story and screenplay
Hot Stuff, 1979 co-story and co-screenplay
Supertrain (TV pilot), 1979 story and teleplay
The Stepfather, 1987 screenplay and co-story
Father Dowling, 1987 (TV pilot) story and teleplay
Why Me, 1990 co-screenplay from my novel
The Grifters, 1990 screenplay from Jim Thompson novel, Oscar nomination
Fly paper, 1993 (TV anthology episode), teleplay from Dashiell Hammett short story
Most data from his official website at www.donaldwestlake.com. There are more aliases and movies at the iMDB, but I really don't have means to check if they are legit.