In the Shadow of the Master (William Morrow, 416 pages, $24.95), edited by Michael Connelly: The beating of the telltale heart still echoes beneath the floorboards. The cask of amontillado still eludes the wretched Fortunato. The raven still croaks, “Nevermore.”

No matter how many times you read them, Edgar Allan Poe’s classic tales never seem to lose their macabre magic.

In the Shadow of the Master was edited by Michael Connelly and includes vignettes by mystery authors from Sue Grafton to Stephen King.

Their essays provide a range of insightful observations. Some authors reminisce about their favorite Poe tales, while others recall their first exposure to his stories. Still others have come back to Poe’s works after many years and describe how their reactions have evolved as they’ve grown older.

Most of the guest essays sparkle. Each is about two to five pages, a quick read, and each resonates with an unmistakable passion for Poe.

One author, Lisa Scottoline, likens high-school exposure to Poe to broccoli for teenagers — as something forced upon kids because it’s good for them. The lesson she learned after Poe’s William Wilson inspired her own evil-twin story. Eat your vegetables.

A particularly stirring vignette by Laura Lippman traces the legend of the Poe Toaster. He or she is the mysterious figure who celebrates Poe’s birthday every year by stealthily leaving three red roses and half a bottle of cognac on his grave in downtown Baltimore.

Lippman once kept watch at the grave and finally caught a glimpse of the figure. But she refuses to describe the elusive fan, respecting the person’s mystery the same way that person honors the king of mysteries.

All Poe’s classics are here: The Pit and the Pendulum, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Raven.

So are a number of other works, lesser-known but still distinctively Poe. A Descent Into the Maelstrom, The Masque of the Red Death and Ligeia may not have the same name recognition as his more famous stories, but they are no less gripping.

A number of the vignettes speak of an experience that certainly rings true for this reviewer. Poe was required reading in our sixth-grade class. When we were that young, his formidable vocabulary made some of his stories a little too complex to fully appreciate.

But rereading the tales as an adult brings a fresh sense of admiration. Few authors can match his disturbing detail, few can create such disconcerting worlds of madness.

That’s why the Mystery Writers of America named its annual award the Edgar Award (this years nominees).

The only thing that separates In the Shadow of the Master from any other Poe anthology is the 20 vignettes, most of which are worthy additions. Their collective effect is to create a sense of camaraderie, as though a group of friends has gathered in communal respect of Poe’s genius.

If you just want to read Poe, any anthology will do.

But readers who have loved Poe since they first explored his works will feel a special appreciation for this volume.

From the New York Times

By Jennifer Lee

Donald E. Westlake, a prolific, award-winning mystery novelist who pounded out more than 100 books and 5 screenplays on manual typewriters during a career of nearly 50 years, died on Wednesday night. He was 75.

Mr. Westlake collapsed as he was headed to New Year’s Eve dinner while on vacation in Mexico, said his wife, Abigail Westlake.

The cause was a heart attack, she said.

Mr. Westlake, considered one of the most successful and versatile mystery writers in the United States, received an Academy Award nomination for a screenplay, three Edgar Awards and the title of Grand Master from the Mystery Writers of America in 1993.

Since his first novel, The Mercenaries, was published by Random House in 1960, Mr. Westlake had written under his own name and several pseudonyms, including Richard Stark, Tucker Coe, Samuel Holt and Edwin West. Despite the diversity of pen names, most of his books shared one feature: They were set in New York City, where he was born.

Mr. Westlake used different names in part to combat skepticism over his rapid rate of writing books, sometimes as many as four a year, his friends said.

“In the beginning, people didn’t want to publish more than one book a year by the same author,” said Susan Richman, his publicist at Grand Central Publishing.

Later in his career, Mr. Westlake limited himself to two pen names, each generally focusing on one primary character: He used his own name to write about an unintentionally comical criminal named John Dortmunder, and as Richard Stark wrote a series about an anti-hero and criminal named Parker.

Mr. Westlake occasionally wrote about other characters, such as Burke Devore, the downsized executive turned murderer in The Ax, whom The New York Times described in 1997 “as emblematic of his time as George F. Babbitt and Holden Caulfield and Capt. John Yossarian were of theirs.”

The full panoply of Mr. Westlake’s books was a spectacle to behold, his friends said. “We were in his library, this beautiful library surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of titles,” said Laurence Kirshbaum, his agent, “and I realized that every single book was written by Donald Westlake, English-language and foreign-language editions.”

Mr. Westlake’s cinematic style of storytelling, along with his carefully crafted plots and crisp dialogue, translated well on the screen. More than 15 of his books were made into movies. In addition, he wrote a number of screenplays, including The Grifters, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1991.

Mr. Westlake wrote seven days a week, his friends said. His productiveness was honed in part by an era in which publishing houses churned out books at a relentless pace. During that time, he also wrote erotic literature, science fiction and westerns.

Mr. Westlake resisted computers and typed his manuscripts on manual typewriters. “They came in perfectly typed,” Mr. Kirshbaum said. “You felt like it was almost written by hand.”

Otto Penzler, a longtime friend of Mr. Westlake’s and the owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in TriBeCa, said, “He hated the idea of an electric typewriter because, he said, ‘I don’t want to sit there while I am thinking and have something hum at me.’ ”

Mr. Westlake kept four or five typewriters and cannibalized their parts when any one broke, as the typewriter model was no longer manufactured, his friends said.

“He lived in fear that he wouldn’t have his little portable typewriter,” said Mr. Penzler, who once gave him a similar typewriter that he had found in a secondhand store.

Donald Edwin Westlake was born to Lillian and Albert Westlake on July 12, 1933, in Brooklyn, and was raised in Yonkers and Albany. He attended colleges in New York, but did not graduate. He married Abigail Adams in 1979, and the couple settled in Gallatin, N.Y. He was previously married to Nedra Henderson and Sandra Kalb.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Westlake is survived by four sons, Sean Westlake, Steven Westlake, Paul Westlake and Todd Westlake; two stepdaughters, Adrienne Adams and Katherine Adams; a stepson, Patrick Adams; a sister, Virginia VanDermark; and four grandchildren.

Mr. Westlake was productive until his death. His next novel, Get Real, is scheduled for release in April.

“One Night Stands and Lost Weekends” (HarperCollins, 384 pages, $14.95), by Lawrence Block: Beware the book whose author admits in the introduction he’s afraid to read the stories that follow:

“I’m scared I’ll decide not to publish them after all, and it’s too late for that. So an uncharacteristic attack of honesty compels me to advise you that I am in the curious position of introducing you to a couple of dozen short stories which I myself haven’t read in forty years.”

That’s from one of three introductions Block writes in “One Night Stands and Lost Weekends,” a fun if warmed over collection of the author’s early work, which had already been published in separate collectors’ volumes at the turn of the century.

The stories are just what the title suggests. Quickies sold to pulps and their descendants in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the first part of the book and easily digestible hard-boiled novellas in the second. They’re all easily forgettable — Block, in fact, forgot about a few — but curiously compelling.

Though they mirrored the dreck of the day — full of rapists, murders with semi-plausible twists and an unending line of bombshell blondes pulling a double-cross — Block shows the early promise that would lead him to Grand Master status with the Mystery Writers of America and four Edgar and Shamus awards.

His Matthew Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr characters are the gold standard. “One Night Stands and Lost Weekends” gives fans of Block’s work an early look at the flamboyant fun of the Rhodenbarr mysteries and the wry humor and violence of the Scudder noirs.

The first part of the book is populated with stories whose titles are self-explanatory: “Murder Is My Business,” “The Bad Night,” “Bargain in Blood” and “Hate Goes Courting.” They appeared in such forgettable magazines as Manhunt, Trapped and Two-Fisted.

The second part of the book contains three novellas first collected as “The Lost Cases of Ed London.” London is more anti-Scudder than proto-Scudder with an uncomplicated life — if you ignore the bullets flying — full of clients, drink and nubile young women looking to throw a suave Manhattan P.I. off the trail.

Both sets of stories are tasty like candy and a little addictive. But like Block acknowledges in his introductions, this book is really for those fans who’ve read the author’s contemporary work.

For those who want to introduce themselves to the author, skip this book and head directly to “When the Sacred Ginmill Closes” or “Burglars Can’t Be Choosers.”

You won’t be sorry.

NEW YORK (AFP) – Ira Levin, the playwright and novelist who wrote “Rosemary’s Baby,” “The Stepford Wives” and “The Boys From Brazil,” has died at the age of 78, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

Levin died Monday at his home in Manhattan, apparently of natural causes, the newspaper quoted his son Nicholas as saying.

Able to write a variety of genres, from mystery and horror to Broadway comedy, Levin sold tens of millions of books despite producing only seven novels in four decades, the Times quoted his agent Phyllis Westberg as saying.

Several of his works were given the Hollywood treatment, including perhaps most famously his supernatural 1967 novel “Rosemary’s Baby.”

The film version, directed by Roman Polanski in 1968, tells the story of a young bride involved in a group of Satanists who mysteriously falls pregnant.
His 1972 novel “The Stepford Wives,” made into a film in 1975, is a thriller about a group of housewives in a quaint Connecticut town being replaced by robots. It was remade in 2004 in a movie starring Nicole Kidman.

“The Boys From Brazil,” written in 1976 and adapted for the screen in 1978 spins a tale of a bizarre Nazi plot to resurrect Hitler and the Third Reich in South America in the late 1970s.

Levin was born in New York in 1929 and served in the US Army briefly in the early 1950s after leaving university. He went on to write for television before publishing his first novel, “A Kiss Before Dying,” in 1953.

The book won Levin the best first novel from the Mystery Writers of America and was twice adapted for screen.

He also wrote for theater, notably adapting a novel by Mac Hyman into the 1955 Broadway comedy hit “No Time for Sergeants,” and penning comic thriller “Deathtrap,” in 1979, which ran on Broadway before also being made into a film.

According to the New York Times, Levin was unhappy with the legacy of popular Satanism that followed the release of “Rosemary’s Baby.”

“I feel guilty that ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ led to ‘The Exorcist,’ ‘The Omen,’” it quoted him as telling the The Los Angeles Times in 2002. “A whole generation has been exposed, has more belief in Satan.

“I don’t believe in Satan. And I feel that the strong fundamentalism we have would not be as strong if there hadn’t been so many of these books.”

“Of course,” he reportedly added, “I didn’t send back any of the royalty checks.”