Prolific writers, people who thumped out the words, churned out the books . . . and short stories, and poems, essays, reviews and commentaries, here’s a short list: John Updike, James Patterson, Robert B. Parker, Joyce Carol Oates.

Donald Westlake is there, too.

He wore out two manual typewriters in his lifetime, and it isn’t any wonder because he wrote more than 100 novels, and most of them were mysteries.

Westlake was a fast writer.

Today, we have a couple mystery/thriller writers who publish four books a year under their own name, but back in the 1960’s – the decade in which Westlake wrote 35 of his 100 novels – readers didn’t think writers could crank ’em out that fast. So to get his books out there, Westlake published under his name and a double handful of pen names, the best known of which are Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, and Edwin West.

Westlake loved a good laugh, so he wove fun and even farce into his crime novels. Editor/publisher Otto Penzler said Westlake was “the most consistently humorous writer of mystery and crime fiction the world has ever seen.”

A New York Times book critic was more direct. He declared Westlake to be the king of comic capers.

High praise, both of those statements.

Westlake raked in his share of honors for his writing – three Edgar Awards (1968, Best Novel, God Save the Mark; 1990, Best Short Story, “Too Many Crooks”; 1991, Best Motion Picture Screenplay, The Grifters), an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay adaptation of The Grifters, and in 1993 the Mystery Writers of America awarded Westlake the title of Grand Master for his body of work.

Crime novelist and critic H.R.F. Keating ranked Nobody’s Perfect, Westlake’s 1977 novel, as one of the world’s top 100 crime and mystery books.

Westlake started out writing mystery short stories that he sold to the pulp magazines. But in 1960, he broke into the book world with The Mercenaries.

He wrote that book and his other early novels in the hard-boiled style of Raymond Chandler.

Westlake found his own voice with his 1965 novel, The Fugitive Pigeon, the first of his crime novels in which he laced the story with jokes and humor.

He was a master of language and image. For most writers, an empty bourbon glass is just that – empty. But for Westlake, the glass has “nothing but an amber echo round the bottom.”

Westlake also had a gift for giving his villains the best lines. One complains about his inept getaway driver: “Before we got outa the car, when the cops surrounded us, I broke his neck. We all said it was whiplash from the sudden stop.”

Hollywood producers loved Westlake’s books. They turned 15 into movies

Westlake departed this world on New Year’s Eve 2008 at the age of 75.

Tomorrow: The Hot Rock