debuted: Rolfe Passer: An early Westlake story was published under this name in Mystery Digest in 1958. Rolfe Passer was actually the assistant editor of the magazine at the time. It is not known why the story was published under Passer's name; frequent Westlake collaborator Lawrence Block has suggested "editorial incompetence". Richard Stark: Westlake's best-known continuing pseudonym was that of Richard Stark. The Stark pseudonym was notable both for the sheer amount of writing credited to it (far more than any other except Westlake's real name itself), as well as for Stark's particular style of writing, which was colder, darker, less sentimental, and less overtly humorous than Westlake's usual prose. For a period in the late 1960s, the popularity of the Parker series made Stark's name more well-known and more lucrative for Westlake than his real name. According to Westlake, he chose the name "Richard Stark" for actor Richard Widmark, whose performance in the film Kiss of Death impressed Westlake: "part of the character's fascination and danger is his unpredictability. He's fast and mean, and that's what I wanted the writing to be: crisp and lean, no fat, trimmed down ... stark." Westlake described the difference between Stark's style and his usual style in a 2001 article for the New York Times Book Review: "Stark and Westlake use language very differently. To some extent they're mirror images. Westlake is allusive, indirect, referential, a bit rococo. Stark strips his sentences down to the necessary information." Stark debuted in 1959, with a story in Mystery Digest. Four other Stark short stories followed through 1961, including "The Curious Facts Preceding My Execution", later the title story in Westlake's first short-story collection. Then, from 1962 to 1974, sixteen novels about the relentless and remorseless professional thief Parker and his accomplices (including larcenous actor Alan Grofield) appeared and were credited to Richard Stark. After Butcher's Moon in 1974, Westlake unexpectedly found himself unable to tap into what he called Stark's "personality." Despite repeated attempts to bring him back, Westlake was unsatisfied. Years later, when Westlake had been hired to write the screenplay for The Grifters, director Stephen Frears was so impressed by its lean, cold attitude that he insisted that the screenplay had been written by Stark, not Westlake, and even tried to get Stark's name officially credited as the writer. Westlake said that "I got out of that one by explaining Richard Stark wasn't