The following observation and question was first posted here by Vince Keenan on June 4, 2007:

    “I recently reread Westlake’s The Hot Rock for the first time in ages and was struck by the fact that Grofield makes an appearance. One of the members of Dortmunder’s crew, Alan Greenwood, is forced to change his last name after he’s arrested. We learn in the book’s penultimate chapter that he’s now Alan Grofield.

WESTLAKE The Hot Rock

    “Grofield had already been established in the Parker series as well as his own books at this point. So is this a belated origin story, as they say in the comics field?”

    I didn’t know, but I more or less assumed that Vince was right. No one responded to this online inquiry to say for sure, until today, when I heard from Gabe Lee, who left the following comment:

    “I remember seeing similarites in Greenwood and Grofield while reading The Hot Rock the first time a few years ago, having recently devoured all of the Stark books in order.

    “I felt vindicated at the end when they were revealed to be the same person.”

    When I thanked Gabe for leaving a definitive answer at last, he replied:

    “A bit more I didn’t see mentioned here… The Hot Rock was started as a Parker novel by Stark. The premise got too absurd for Parker’s character; no way he would have put up with that nonsense.

    “Westlake rewrote the book and created Dortmunder to replace Parker as the main character. I’m assuming Grofield was in before the rewrite, and was changed to Greenwood (same initials, same first name spelled differently). He then switched Greenwood back to Grofield as Vince noted earlier.

    “It creates a fun chicken and egg scenario; maybe Grofield came first and that name was still clean. It’s one of the fun crossover tricks to look out for among Westlake’s many pseudonyms.

    “Another fun thing to look for, he often uses ‘Pointers’ and ‘Setters’ for restroom signs in bars, and uses it under different author names. I’ve seen other (non-Westlake) authors use it as well, but can’t recall where. I’m guessing it’s sort of an inside joke among the writers, or an homage, but don’t know where it started.”

    To which I responded by saying: I think that researchers with graduate theses and dissertations in mind will have a field day with all of the in-jokes and cross-references in Westlake’s work. If Westlake had been a “literary” figure instead of a mere mystery writer, I’d be sure of it.

    Then to Gabe, for the final word:

    “I completely agree, the crossover stuff is fun to look for. There’s so much of it, and I can picture the late great Mr. Westlake chuckling as he typed away. BTW, after racking my brain a bit I think Charles Willeford uses the Pointers and Setters thing in Cockfighter from 1962… I’ll have to re-read it to be sure.”


Gabriel E. Lee
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