Mon 4 Jun 2007
Inquiry: Did ALAN GROFIELD’s origin story appear in THE HOT ROCK?
Posted by Steve under Authors , Characters , Inquiries[8] Comments
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.
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?
[UPDATE] Later the same evening. I don’t know anything more about Greenwood / Grofield than I did earlier today, but I did some surfing and came up with the following somewhat relevant information. First of all, first editions of The Hot Rock in dust jacket (1970) are starting to get pricey. You can pick up Fair ex-library copies for $15, but be prepared to spend in the low three-figure range for one in VG condition.
Even copies of the first printing Pocket paperback are hard to find, although not expensive. The cover image below is taken from a later Canadian printing.
There was a movie made of the book, and do you know, I had completely forgotten that it was Robert Redford who played Dortmunder. His brother-in-law, Andrew Kelp, is played by George Segal in the 1972 movie. Others in the gang are Ron Liebman as Stan Murch, and Paul Sand as Alan Greenberg. The image below was taken from the laserdisc version.
![The Hot Rock [Laser]](https://mysteryfile.com/blogImg6/Hot_RockLD2.JPG)
As for Paul Sand, it was surprising difficult to find a photo of him. The one below came from the classic extravaganza TV series, Supertrain (1979). Too bad it’s a few years too late to be useful, but so far, it’s the best I have.
November 12th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Here’s a more date-appropriate photo of Paul Sand:
http://www.sitcomsonline.com/21sand.jpg
February 1st, 2009 at 1:59 pm
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.
February 1st, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Thanks, Gabe!
February 1st, 2009 at 3:31 pm
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.
February 1st, 2009 at 3:38 pm
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.
— Steve
February 2nd, 2009 at 12:50 am
Steve, who do we lobby to get Westlake recognised?
November 27th, 2010 at 6:56 am
The Dortmunder novel Jimmy the Kid established that, in Dortmunder’s world, Parker seemingly did not exist, and only represented a fictional creation of that world’s counterpart of Donald Westlake.
In Jimmy the Kid, Dortmunder uses a novel called Child Heist, by Richard Stark, one of Stark’s series of novels about a hard-boiled crook named Parker, as a blueprint for how to run a kidnapping.
However, Richard Stark is, in real life, as noted, the pseudonym under which Westlake writes the Parker novels. There wasn’t a separate novel called Child Heist in real life, either. Anyway, the kidnapping falls apart and the kid in question, Jimmy, who’s kind of a film buff, goes on to make a movie about his experience.
There’s a chapter at the end of the novel where Richard Stark (no mention of his real name as Westlake in the letter, by the way) and his lawyers are sending each other letters speculating about the possibility of suing the kid for using the plot of Child Heist in the movie. (The lawyer says no, he can make a movie about his experiences, but Stark can try suing the crooks if he can find them.)
This would seem to suggest, that obviously, Dortmunder novels do not exist in Dortmunder’s universe, and, as noted, Parker only existed in fiction in Dortmunders’ world.
However, in the first Dortmunder novel, The Hot Rock, published in 1970, one of the members of Dortmunder’s crew, Alan Greenwood, is forced to change his last name after his arrest. We learn in the book’s penultimate chapter that he now uses the name Alan Grofield.
Parker had already worked in several books (starting with 1964’s The Score) with a partner thief named Alan Grofield, with Grofield even receiving his own solo series of novels. Since, in our world, the Parker novels circulated widely in prison libraries (actual criminals finding it refreshing that Parker and his men usually evaded capture), we could surmise that Greenwood had read one of the Parker novels and chose the name “Grofield” in honor of them.
However, both the Dortmunder and Parker series have done crossovers with the Dan Kearney Associates novels by Joe Gores. The Donald Westlake novel Drowned Hopes (1990), featuring Dortmunder, shares an entire chapter in common with Gore’s DKA novel Thirty-two Cadillacs (1992). Dead Skip (1972), the first DKA novel, shared a chapter with Plunder Squad (1972), a Parker novel by Richard Stark (aka Westlake).
This would place DKA, Parker and Dortmunder in one universe. To preserve Jimmy the Kid, one would have to say that the Donald Westlake/Richard Stark of this world (i.e. Dortmunder’s universe) must have invented a completely fictional adventure for that novel about Parker.
After all, if he only fictionalized actual events (i.e. the kidnapping of a previous child by Parker), he would have no grounds for suing Jimmy. However, if he wrote a novel about a completely fictional event, then he might have thought he could sue. This unfortunately suggests that he penetrated the anonymity that Parker worked under.
However, Parker used multiple aliases and alternate identities (e.g. Charles Willis in The Outfit, Ronald Kasper Matthew Walker in The Black Ice Score, Lynch in The Green Eagle Score, possibly Porter, Walker or Archer; the name Parker itself may serve as just another alias) for tax reporting purposes to launder his money by owning gas stations and parking lots, as well as for other purposes.
Perhaps Westlake guessed the truth, surmising from police reports that one man had participated in numerous robberies under various aliases. He may have discerned some of the identities that Parker used but not all of them.
October 20th, 2013 at 7:52 am
Quick update:
Alan Grofield lives in Indiana, while Alan Greenwood lives in New York. So that suggests them as separate people.