The Comedy is Finished

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

Donald Westlake began writing this book in the late 1970s. In the early 1980s, he sent a carbon copy of the finished manuscript to fellow crime writer Max Allan Collins, with whom he’d been corresponding for more than ten years. Shortly afterwards, Don decided not to publish the book, in part because Martin Scorsese had just released the movie The King of Comedy and Don thought some readers might feel the movie’s premise and the book’s were too similar. Max packed the manuscript away in a box in his basement, where it sat for the better part of the next three decades.

When Hard Case Crime published Memory in 2010, describing it as “Donald Westlake’s final unpublished novel,” Max informed us of this one’s existence, unearthed the faded typescript, and sent it to us in the hope that the book would finally see print.

That it has is thanks to Abby Westlake and to Larry Kirshbaum, agent for the Westlake Estate, who agreed to let us publish it—but all three of us owe special thanks to Max Allan Collins, without whom The Comedy Is Finished might never again have seen the light of day.