Alan Grofield

Alan Grofield is a fictional character created by Donald E. Westlake. He is the main protagonist of four of the 28 novels Westlake has written under the pseudonym Richard Stark, and a supporting character in an additional four. Grofield's first appearance was in the novel The Score, which was published in 1964.

A career criminal and professional thief, Grofield is a devilishly handsome and charming womanizer whose main passion in life is the stage. In fact, the only reason he steals is to keep his summer stock company running, and if he were ever able to make enough money through his legitimate artistic efforts, he would have no trouble giving up his life of crime. Unlike his frequent companion Parker, Grofield is a somewhat inconsistent character, and his adventures run the gamut from hard-boiled crime stories (Lemons Never Lie) to more fanciful, James Bond-style globetrotting and intrigue (The Damsel, The Dame, and The Blackbird).

During the events of The Score, Grofield met his future wife and acting partner, Mary Deegan, a hostage taken during the heist in that novel, who insisted on leaving town with him. She is referenced in the Grofield novels, and features prominently in Lemons Never Lie. She helps him run his theater, and serves as his leading lady. Grofield is very happy with her, but feels no compunction about being with other women when he's away on a heist.

Grofield is not mentioned in any of the eight Parker novels after Butcher's Moon, and we do not learn whether he has died, gone to jail, or has simply retired from heisting.

Novels

• The Score (1964, aka Killtown), a novel in Westlake's Parker series
• The Handle (1966, aka Run Lethal), a novel in Westlake's Parker series
• The Damsel (1967)
• The Dame (1969)
• The Blackbird (1969) — First chapter shared with Slayground (below)
• Lemons Never Lie (1971)
• Slayground (1971), a novel in Westlake's Parker series. Grofield appears only briefly.
• Butcher's Moon (1974), a novel in Westlake's Parker series

Grofield is mentioned in passing in the Parker novel The Sour Lemon Score, but does not appear.

also:

• The Hot Rock (1970), the first of the Dortmunder series, written by Westlake under his real name. Charming ladies' man Alan Greenwood changes his name to Alan Grofield after Dortmunder and company break him out of jail (p. 233). This clearly isn't the same Grofield that appears in the Parker novels. Leaving aside the fact that this Grofield isn't married, and shows no interest in the theater, in the later Dortmunder book Jimmy the Kid, Parker is revealed to be a well-known fictional character in Dortmunder's reality, and Richard Stark is a real person, not a pseudonym of Donald Westlake. Westlake is clearly sharing a joke with those readers who know he also wrote the Parker novels. One could consider this Grofield to be a parallel universe version of the one who works with Parker, sharing many of the same quirks, but like Dortmunder, presenting a much less romantic image of the heisting world than his counterpart in the Richard Stark novels. Also, since The Hot Rock was originally going to be a Parker novel, Westlake probably intended the earlier version of Grofield to be in it, and then adapted him into a similar yet very different character once he realized a comic Parker novel wouldn't work.

References

Bibliography from Donald Westlake's Web site.

External links

• Web site devoted to the Parker novels, with a special section devoted to Grofield