My Washington Times Review Of Don Winslow's 'Broken'

The Washington Times published my review of Don Winslow’s Broken.

After publishing a big crime novel like “The Cartel,” “The Force” and “The Border” every two years, Don Winslow decided to publish “Broken,” a collection of five novellas and one short story. Inspired by the novella collections of Jim Harrison and Stephen King, Don Winslow sees the quick potential of selling the six stories to television and films.

FX is working on his cartel drug trafficking trilogy — “Power of the Dog,” “The Cartel” and “The Border” — into a television series called “The Cartel.” TV and film producers are also buying or bidding on other Winslow crime novels. At 65, Mr. Winslow, a former private detective and safari guide, is considered a hot property.

In “Broken,” the stories are connected by themes of crime, corruption, tragedy and humor.  

Mr. Winslow offers an Ernest Hemingway quote, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places,” to open his story, “Broken.”  

“You ain’t gotta tell Eva the world is a broken place,” Mr. Winslow writes. “A 911 dispatcher on a night shift, Eva McNabb hears humanity’s brokenness for eight hours straight, five nights a week, more when she’s pulling doubles. She hears the car accidents, the robberies, the shootings, the murders, the maiming’s, the deaths. She hears the fear, the panic, the anger, the rage, the chaos, and she sends men racing toward it.”   

Her two sons are New Orleans police officers. One is a sensitive patrol officer and the other is a brutal narcotics officer. The sensitive cop is murdered by a drug trafficker who sought to punish the narcotics officer who busted his drug shipment. The murder sets off a tale of revenge and murder.

In “Crime 101,” which Mr. Winslow dedicates to the late actor Steve McQueen, a clever jewel thief travels California Highway 101 in San Diego, robbing jewel couriers and merchants with a minimum of force and maximum speed. The crook admires Steve McQueen, the definition of California cool, and adheres to a set of principals he calls Crime 101 (“Crime 101: There’s a word for a man who believes in coincidences: the defendant”). The crook is pursued by an old school San Diego detective in this clever and interesting story.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/apr/16/book-review-broken/ 

My Washington Times Review Of 'The Border'

The Washington Times published my review of Don Winslow’s The Border.

While serving in the U.S. Navy on an aircraft carrier in San Diego in 1970, I was a frequent visitor to Tijuana. We were told to be most careful regarding the criminals and drug gangs that operated openly in Tijuana, especially at night. During the day, Americans flocked to Tijuana for the shopping and the city was relatively safe. But at night, the streets, bars and cantinas were prowled by drug dealers, armed robbers and other assorted criminals. Still, many American servicemen flocked to Tijuana for the nightlife. In later years, rival criminal drug gangs turned this exotic and exciting Mexican city into an open war zone.

For more than 20 years, Don Winslow has researched the Mexican drug cartels and its huge, far-reaching and powerful criminal enterprise. Mr. Winslow’s “The Border” is the last installment of a fictional trilogy that includes 2005’s “The Power of the Dog” and 2015’s “The Cartel.”

The first two well-researched and well-written novels feature a mano a mano contest between an “El Chapo” type brilliant and violent Mexican drug lord named Adan Barrera, the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, and an obsessive half-Mexican DEA special agent named Art Keller. The two, at times friends and allies, but more often bitter enemies, operate against each other in Mexico and across the border in America.

In “The Border,” Adan Barrera is missing after a gunfight with a rival cartel and is presumed dead. In his wake, other drug lords vie for his top spot with corruption, conspiracy and countless murders.

...The horror of the murders and violence in this novel and the two previous novels might seem gratuitous had not Mr. Winslow based nearly all the atrocities on true incidents. Mr. Winslow’s drawn-from-the-headlines scenes are supplemented with scenes and characters that are reminiscent of some popular crime films.

Having gone out with narcotic officers on drug raids and having interviewed numerous cops and DEA special agents over the years, I found the crime scenes to mostly ring true.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/6/book-review-the-border-by-don-winslow/  

My Washington Times Review Of Don Winslow's 'The Force'

The Washington Times published my review of Don Winslow’s The Force.

Don Winslow has stated in interviews that he has always wanted to write a book about New York City cops.

He says he was influenced heavily in his youth by books and films from the 1970s, such as “The French Connection,” “Serpico” and “Prince of the City.” There are many passages in Mr. Winslow’s new crime novel, “The Force,” that are reminiscent of those gritty and realistic cop books and films.

Mr. Winslow’s previous novels, “The Power of the Dog” and “The Cartel,” covered the Mexican drug cartels. In those fine novels he accurately and vividly portrayed the cartel’s mass murders and mass corruption. In “The Force,” Mr. Winslow covers what one might call “ground zero” in the war on drugs — the streets of New York City.

The main character in “The Force” is NYPD Seargent Danny Malone, an Irish-American rogue cop who is the boss of an elite squad called Manhattan North Special Task Force, better known as “Da Force.” But with nearly all of the police officers portrayed as corrupt in the novel, one gets the impression that Danny Malone is not a rogue at all. He is simply very good at being a bad cop.

Mr. Winslow calls Da Force “the toughest, the quickest, the bravest, the best, the baddest.” And, I might add, the most corrupt. Assigned to fight drugs and guns, as guns kill and drugs incite the killings, the squad is a holy terror to the drug traffickers and gangs on the streets. The squad provides aid and security to the citizens of the poor community, but they also steal money and drugs from the criminals and otherwise abuse their authority.

The novel, written from the viewpoint of Malone, opens with Malone in a federal lock-up. Him, a hero cop. The son of a hero cop. And most of all, we are told, a guy who knows where all the skeletons are buried, because he put half of him there himself.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jul/2/book-review-the-force/ 

Don Winslow: By the Book

Don Winslow, author of the new crime novel The Force, answers the New York Times' questions about books.

Whom do you consider the best crime writers working today? And among classic writers of the genre?

I’m always reluctant to answer this question for fear of leaving someone out. There are so many, and I think that the genre is producing some of the best writing we have today. But O.K., here goes: Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane, Val McDermid, Steve Hamilton, T. Jefferson Parker, Joe Wambaugh, Lou Berney, Denise Mina, James Ellroy, Reed Farrel Coleman, Adrian McKinty, Lee Child, Meg Gardiner, Lawrence Block.…

Among the classic writers? I never stop learning from Raymond Chandler and Mr. Elmore Leonard. (The half-hour I spent with him on the phone shortly before he passed were 30 of the best minutes of my life.) John MacDonald, Ross Macdonald, James Crumley, Charles Willeford, Chester Himes, Robert B. Parker. Those guys turned crime writing into music.

You can read the rest of the interview via the below link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/books/review/don-winslow-by-the-book.html  

Note: My review of Don Winslow's The Force will appear shortly in the Washington Times. 

Crime Writer Don Winslow Working On Sequel To 'The Cartel'

The Washington Times offers a report on crime novelist Don Winslow's next book.

Crime writer Don Winslow just can’t leave the drug wars alone.

A year after he swore there’d be no sequel to “The Cartel,” his acclaimed follow-up to “The Power of the Dog,” Winslow tweeted Wednesday he’s begun a third volume.

His literary agent, Shane Salerno, confirmed the news to The Associated Press and said the book currently has no title or release date. The first two novels center on the drug trade in Mexico and feature maverick drug law enforcement agent Art Keller and a cartel boss modeled on the notorious Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, otherwise known as El Chapo.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/1/back-in-business-winslow-working-on-sequel-to-the-/

‘Cartel’ Author Don Winslow Responds To Sean Penn: “Call It Anything You Want – Except Journalism”

Don Winslow, the author of The Cartel, offers his view of Sean Penn's so-called interview with a Mexican drug lord fugitive in a piece for Deadline.com.

Bestselling novelist Don Winslow has written two epics about the Drug War: 2005’s The Power of The Dog and The Cartel, the latter of which was one of the best reviewed novels of 2015 and sold to Fox for a film that will be directed by Ridley Scott. Winslow has spent nearly 20 years researching the Mexican cartels, and the most of the violence in The Cartel is based on real events. He dedicated the book to the more than 100 journalists killed in cartel violence, and named every slain reporter in his intro. He agreed to write for Deadline why he was so appalled by Sean Penn’s El Chapo encounter and subsequent 60 Minutes interview.

“My article failed.”

So Sean Penn tells Charlie Rose.

Well, yes.

As someone who has researched and written about the Mexican cartels and the futile ‘war on drugs’ for coming on twenty years, I know how tough a subject it is. Mind-bending, soul-warping, heartbreaking, it challenges your intellect, your beliefs, your faith in humanity and God. No journalist or writer who has ever tackled it has emerged quite the same – and all too many have not survived at all, but been tortured, mutilated and killed on the orders of such as Joaquin Guzman. (I resist the cute sobriquet of ‘Chapo.’ He is not one of the Seven Dwarfs – not Dopey, or Sneezy or Bashful. He’s a mass murderer.)

When I first heard that Penn had done an interview with Guzman, I was wondering what terms were demanded to grant that interview. Penn has a reputation of not shying away from controversy or hard, unpopular stances. I was hoping that he would ask Guzman questions that would matter.

Mr. Penn tells Charlie Rose that he considers the article a failure because it did not succeed in addressing his real issue – our policies of the ‘war on drugs.’ But in an article of 10,500 words, the phrase ‘war on drugs’ appears three times. It was not the purpose or focus of Penn’s horribly misguided piece.

Penn’s article had nothing to do with the forty year, trillion dollar failure that is the ‘war on drugs’ — it was instead a brutally simplistic and unfortunately sympathetic portrait of a mass murderer. Penn thought he had scored a journalistic coup – instead his interview was the by-product of Guzman’s infatuation with a soap-opera actress (Guzman didn’t even know who Penn was) and told the exact story that Guzman wanted – with line by line editorial approval courtesy of Penn and Rolling Stone.

Guzman was never called to answer the hard questions. That’s a shame, because these questions need answers.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://deadline.com/2016/01/sean-penn-el-chapo-don-winslow-response-the-cartel-1201685328/

You can also read my Crime Beat column on Don Winslow's crime novel Savages via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/08/on-crime-thrillers-don-winslows-savages.html  

George Will: Gifted Writer Chronicles The 'Vocabulary Of Mutilation Of Mexican Drug Cartels'

George Will in his column in the Washington Post covers Don Winslow's crime thriller The Cartel and the war on drugs. 

Don Winslow, novelist and conscientious objector to America’s longest “war,” was skeptical when he was in Washington on a recent Sunday morning. This was shortly after news broke about the escape, from one of Mexico’s “maximum security” prisons, of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, head of the Sinaloa drug cartel.

Guzman reportedly disappeared through a tunnel almost a mile long and built solely for his escape. Asked about this, Winslow, his fork poised over an omelet, dryly said he thinks Guzmán might actually have driven away from the prison’s front gate in a Lincoln Town Car. What might seem like cynicism could be Winslow’s realism. Fourteen years ago, Guzmán allegedly escaped from another “maximum security” prison simply by hiding in a laundry cart. With exquisite understatement, the Wall Street Journal reports that his recent escape raised “new concerns about corruption in Mexican law enforcement.”

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-gifted-writer-chronicles-the-drug-cartels-vocabulary-of-mutilation/2015/08/05/7547f5c4-3ada-11e5-8e98-115a3cf7d7ae_story.html 

Don Winslow Returns To Drug Wars In Thriller 'The Cartel'

Hillel Italie offers a piece in the Washington Times on Don Winslow and his new crime thriller, The Cartel.  

“People refer to this as the ‘Mexican drug problem’ and it’s NOT the Mexican drug problem. It’s the American drug problem. It’s the European drug problem,” the crime novelist says during a recent interview at the Landmark Tavern in Hell’s Kitchen, where he’s eating a late breakfast and discussing the events that inspired his new novel, “The Cartel.”

“We spend billions of dollars buying these drugs at the same time we spend billions of dollars a year trying to keep them from coming in. It’s that conflict, that schizophrenia, it’s that insanity that not only created the cartels but keeps them in business.”

The 61-year-old Winslow, bald and dark-eyed with a deliberate, focused speaking style, has become an unintentional expert on a subject that sickens him. Admittedly prone to “rant” once he gets started, he will invoke everything from philosophy books to World War II as he explains the long history of drugs in this hemisphere and how the U.S. got caught up in a conflict it doesn’t know how to stop.

In 2005, he published the 500-page “The Power of the Dog,” his brutal and acclaimed saga about the drug war and the rare honest man trying to end it - a maverick DEA agent named Art Keller.

Convinced, like Keller, the story was told, Winslow moved on to other projects, including Oliver Stone’s adaptation of his novel “Savages.” But he never stopped keeping an eye on the latest in Mexico and was horrified as the casualties and the cruelties only accumulated. More than 100,000 people have been killed because of the wars among the drug cartels, according to some studies.
“I started reading again and watching again and talking to people, and I think for probably a year or more denying to myself and everybody else that I was going to do that book,” he says. “The more I read the angrier I got.”

Blurbed by James Ellroy as the “‘War and Peace’ of dope war books,” the 600-page “The Cartel,” like “Power of the Dog,” is an intricately detailed narrative of the cartel life - where they live, the cars they drive, the clothes they wear. Winslow’s editor, Alfred A. Knopf publisher Sonny Mehta, said at times the author seemed so immersed in the world of his book he worried that Winslow might have “crossed some lines” and put himself in danger.

 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/22/don-winslow-returns-to-drug-wars-in-thriller-the-c/ 

 

You can also read my Crime Beat column on Don Winslow and his earlier crime thriller, Savages, via the below link:

 

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/08/on-crime-thrillers-don-winslows-savages.html 

Oliver Stone's Film 'Savages'

I saw Oliver Stone's film Savages on cable TV last night.

I liked the book better.

Don Winslow's Savages was a good crime thriller, but Stone's film version failed to deliver the novel's irreverent humor and cleverness along with the suspense and action.

I also fault the director's casting of Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the three principal leads. The three young actors were, to me, unremarkable.

The three actors portray California pot growers and dealers who run afoul of a vicious Mexican drug cartel.

Salma Hayek portrays a female Mexican crime boss that wants to take over the California pot operation and Benicio del Toro portrayed her ruthless chief henchman. The two performances were the best part of the film. I also liked John Travolta as a corrupt DEA special agent.

You can read my review of Don Winslow's Savages via the below link:

http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-crime-thrillers-don-winslows-savages.html

My Crime Beat Column: Don Winslow's 'Savages' is a Fast-Paced, Wild and Funny Crime Story

A team of U.S. Navy SEALs huddles around a coffee urn at their firebase in Afghanistan after an exhausting firefight with the Taliban.

“How can you account for people doing something so … savage?” asks the team’s shocked and appalled medic.

“Easy,” replies the more jaded SEAL team leader. “They’re savages.”

Don Winslow’s crime thriller Savages (Simon and Schuster) opens with two words:

Fuck you.

This is pretty much Chon’s attitude. But Chon, formerly known as John, a former Navy SEAL and  ex-mercenary, doesn’t have attitude, according to his friend Ophelia, he has “baditude.”

Chon, the son of one of the original California marijuana kings, was a bad kid, but he earned his GED, joined the Navy and became a SEAL.

“They taught him to do everything that a seriously crazy, crazily athletic man could do in H2O.

Then they sent him to Stanland.

Afghanistan.

Where…

You got sand, you got snow, you ain’t got no ocean.

The Taliban don’t surf.”

The above is the sort of free verse that Winslow sprinkles through out the novel.

(Note to author Winslow: The L in SEAL stands for land. The SEALs train and operate in the sea, in the air and on land — Sea Air Land — SEAL).

Chon is one of three good friends who live in Laguna Beach.

Ben is the second of the close-knit trio. Ben, the son of leftist, Jewish shrinks (both his mother and father have lucrative psychotherapy practices), is a wealthy environmentalist and philanthropist.

His good deeds are financed by his highly successful marijuana business. Chon, who provides the muscle, is Ben’s partner in the mostly mellow pot business.

Ophelia, known as O for her loud multiple orgasms, is the third friend. O is a slim, “pixie like’ slacker who lives to shop. She has serious issues with her mother, whom she calls “Paqu.” It’s an acronym, O explains, for Passive Aggressive Queen of the Universe.

Her mother is South Orange County rich and beautiful. “Blonde hair, blue eyes and BRMCB — Best Rack Money Can Buy (you have real boobs here, you’re, like, Amish)”

O is happily sleeping with both Chon and Ben and the three friends led an idyllic life on Laguna Beach.

And then the Mexican Baja Cartel made them an offer that they can’t refuse.

The notorious Mexican drug gang wants to take over Ben and Chon’s pot business and make them employees of the cartel. To help convince them of their serious intentions, the cartel sent along a video of several men being beheaded.

Chon wants to respond in the same manner in which he handled an earlier threat from an outlaw biker gang. He killed them.

Ben wants to negotiate with the cartel and he agrees to meet with them. The Mexicans don’t want to negotiate; they want to take over the pot business.

And this impasse begins the conflict in this fast-paced, violent, irreverent and very funny thriller.

I first became acquainted with Don Winslow when I read his crime novel The Winter of Frankie Machine.

In the novel Frank Machiano, known as “Frank the Bait Guy,” runs a bait shop and laundry service in San Diego, California. Machiano, who is known in other certain circles as ”Frankie Machine” for his cold-blooded killing ability, is a retired mob soldier.

He is drawn back into the world organized crime after someone orders a hit on the retired hitman.

Like Savages, The Winter of Frankie Machine is wickedly funny and a fast-paced thriller.

There is talk of Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro making a film of the novel. The character of Machiano’s partner-in-crime would be a good role for Joe Pesci. I’d liked to see Scorsese once again team up with his Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Casino actors, De Niro and Pesci.

I enjoyed Savages but I have two problems with the thriller. My main beef is the character Chon being a former Navy SEAL.

Sure, there are one or two former SEALs who have gone bad in real life, but I’m old enough to recall when every psychotic killer and nut job in novels, on TV and in the movies during the 1960s and 1970s was a Vietnam veteran.

This trend began to wane when Magnum P.I. came on TV in 1980. Magnum offered not only one, but three positive characters who were Vietnam veterans. Thomas Magnum, portrayed by Tom Selleck, was a former Navy SEAL.

Magnum’s two friends, Rick and TC, were also Vietnam veterans. Higgins, the major domo of the Robin Master’s estate, was an honorable World War II veteran.

Magnum P.I., an amusing, lighthearted crime show, was very popular throughout the 1980s. I believe the pro-military show was instrumental in curtailing the veteran as killer and criminal stereotype in novels and on the big and small screen.

I would hate to see that stereotype begin to grow in popular fiction once again.

I also had a problem with the ending of Savages. Of course, I won’t reveal the ending here, but I thought the conclusion of the novel was too pat.

But otherwise I enjoyed the novel, and if you like humorous, irreverent and fast-paced crime thrillers, then you’ll like Savages as well.