Don and Laurence Janifer (aka Larry Mark Harris) collaborated on at least one short story, which you can read about here, and Laurence’s estate claims Barbara Wilson as a Janifer pseudonym. I don’t believe Don would place a book on his personal shelf if he actually didn’t have anything to do with its creation. Lawrence Block agrees and offers an interesting theory as to why this one title would appear in the Westlake collection. According to Block, Janifer was not always in the best of health and sporadically spent stretches of time receiving care in hospital. Rather than a “collaboration,” this is more likely a “rescue” of a manuscript Janifer was close to completing but unable to finish in time to meet his deadline. Given their friendly association and Don’s proclivity for helping the authors he counted among his friends, the most likely scenario is that Don finished the book for Laurence in a time of need. And that’s why it appears on Don’s shelf. It seems as though this will be the last pseudonym to add to the Westlake rap sheet but, as Don would say, I could be wrong…
