The Final Score - Don Winslow

 A couple of years ago Don Winslow announced he was retiring from writing (to spend more time excoriating Donald Trump, if I remember right).   Turns out he only retired from writing novels.   Short novels, which is what he calls the six pieces here, he still writes and publishes.

I am an enormous fan - but lost a little faith with The Force and couldn't get on with the City trilogy.   But the Cartel trilogy is unsurpassed in modern crime literature.  I loved Savages and the surfer crew in The Gentlemen's Hour.   More recently I thoroughly enjoyed his masterly continuation of Trevanian's Shibumi (Satori).   All of these, I believe, are reviewed on this blog.   So I was never not going to pick up The Final Score on the offchance it was more like the Winslow who had once blown me away.

And boy, is it just!   Every single one of the six a winner.  Even better, 'The Lunch Break' is a return for Boone and his surfer crew.   For me the sextet starts really well with 'The Final Score' itself and gets better with each story thereafter.  'The Lunch Break' is fifth of the six and the final, longest story, 'Collision', is so good, it could be an outtake from The Cartel.   In case I have inferred there is something retrospective going on here, let me be clear: these six short novels are fresh, entirely original, in some instances going further in technique than Winslow has gone before.  'True Story', for example, is a dualogue between two wise guys who aren't even given names, who nevertheless bring the mob world to life in banter alone and deliver a powerful twist in the tail.

An absolute treat from start to finish.   Thank you, Don.

City on Fire - Don Winslow

 City on Fire is the first in what Winslow says will be his swansong trilogy.   A year or so ago Winslow announced he was ceasing to be an author in favour of full time political activism.   in fairness, he does both equally well.

Winslow has always been fundamentally a series writer.   He began with a series and his greatest achievement has been his Cartel trilogy, which certainly brought him prominence on this side of the Atlantic.   It is how me and most of my friends found him.   Is City going to equal Cartel?   Hard to say.   It is certainly a major achievement and clearly has the potential to become a masterpiece.

Winslow openly says it is a take on the Iliad.   Instead of Troy we have Winslow's birthplace, Rhode Island.   Instead of hero warriors we have ruthless mobsters, Italians, Irish, and African American.   We begin with the arrival of Helen - or in this case, Pam, an out-of-town beauty spotted enjoying the beach.    Pam unwittingly causes the break-up of old alliances.   Hitherto, the Irish and the Italians have kept to their distinct patches and the black mobsters are purely fringe players.   Rivalry over Pam changes all that.   Paulie Moretti wants her but the useless Liam Murphy wins her - and corrupts her.

Danny Ryan is our Achilles.   His father was once a major player in the game but became a drunk after being dumped with Danny by his showgirl mother.   The Murphys took over the docks and associated rackets.   Danny is now married to Terri Murphy.   He isn't given a seat at the top table.  He doesn't mind, he doesn't particular want to be a mobster.   But then Pat Murphy, the son and heir, is taken out in revenge for Paulie Moretti...   Terri falls pregnant, gives birth to the first Murphy grandson, then falls ill...

The characterisation and plotting are, as always, superb.   We never really know what is going to happen next or how characters will repsond.   Winslow has given himself an epic canvas and fills every inch.   The prose is nowhere near as punchy as in earlier works like Savages or Gentleman's Hour; that would be tiresome in an epic.   Instead it is terse but polished, always pitch-perfect.   I was enthralled, beginning to end.   A top writer on top form.

The Border - Don Winslow

Winslow - back on top form. Brilliant.

The Border concludes the Cartel trilogy and brings it bang up to date. Art Keller emerges from the Guatemalan jungle to take over as head of the DEA, having realised that the only way to tackle America's drug problem is to take out the big money men. That doesn't just mean the Cartel bosses, because Keller now knows there are people above them on the US end of the chain. For the Cartels drugs mean money and power. For the financiers power can be bought by money. And now they plan to buy the ultimate power.

Meanwhile, the fact that Keller has finally taken out Adan Barrera, head of the Sinaloan Cartel and effective boss of bosses, means that the second tier go to war to determine a successor. The lack of order means there are vacuums for figures from the past to return to: men like Rafael Caro, who tortured and murdered Keller's partner thirty years ago, and Eddie Ruiz who was there when Keller took out Adan.

It is a big, BIG story, and rightly so. In so many ways it is the story of our time, the fifty year war on drugs which America has not and will never win. How close Winslow's fiction comes to reality will be open to debate. What is inarguable, a stone fact, is that nobody does this story better than Don Winslow. Does anybody else even dare to try? Each of the three novels - The Power of the Dog, The Cartel, and now The Border - is a major achievement. The three together are a landmark.