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.

The Force - Don Winslow

Been waiting months for this, Winslow's latest, soon to be a major TV series, to come out in paperback. The moment I hear it's in the shops I'm off to Waterstones to snap up my copy. Started reading it that same night.


For anyone who saw The Shield or read Joe Wambaugh's Choirboys back in the Seventies, there's nothing new here. In fact, the situation is slightly worse than that. The storyline in The Force is virtually identical to that of The Shield. The behaviour of the NYPD is no worse in 2017 than it was in the Wambaugh more than forty years earlier. Indeed, Wambaugh's cops were better drawn and I cared more about their fate.


For those, like me, who have read Winslow's Power of the Dog, The Cartel and - best of all - Savages, The Force comes as a massive let down. In those earlier novels Winslow had staked out a territory all his own, with multiple intersecting storylines and deep background. This is New York, ground well and truly trodden, and reads more like a TV novelisation than original fiction. In fact, were Winslow an unknown, I doubt it would ever get accepted for TV because the male anti-hero is a walking-talking stereotype and there is no strong woman to counter him. This latter point is a criminal shame because the other Winslow books I mentioned are packed with interesting women.


It is not badly written - Winslow couldn't write badly if he tried - but compare it with Savages, where even the layout of the words on the page fizzes with invention, and it's pretty stodgy stuff. I liked the character of Monty and I liked Malone's snitch Nasty Ass. Other than that I didn't give two hoots about any of them, especially Malone which, when you've spent 480 pages seeing the world entirely from his point of view, is a frankly damning indictment.

The Cartel - Don Winslow

The Cartel takes up where The Power of the Dog leaves off - it is the second, conclusive round of the lifetime, life-and-death duel to the death between the DEA's Art Keller and Adan Berrera, patron of the combined cartels of Mexico.


I loved The Power of the Dog when I read it earlier this year. The Cartel is just as good, perhaps slightly better. Happily, Winslow still resists the temptation of going the full Ellroy. His world is very dark, very treacherous, and astonishingly violent, but it remains none of the main participants is actually stark staring mad. That's the point - Adan is all about business; where would the Mexican economy be without him? There's a great passage on page 514 where he says:

After the crash [of 2008] the only source of liquidity was drug money. If they shut us down it would have taken the economy on the final plunge. They had to bail out General Motors, not us. And now? Think of the billions of dollars into real estate, stocks, start-up companies. Not to mention the millions of dollars generated fighting the 'war' [on drugs] - weapons manufacture, aircraft, surveillance. Prison construction. You think business is going to let that stop?

That's the beauty and the power of Winslow. He is so on-the-razor's edge current. I gather his latest novel, The Force, is going to propel him into the major league. Even before the book comes out, the TV version is in production. Don Winslow is already pretty big. Within a year he is going to be huge. I just hope he can stay current.

Writing this post, I think I have hit upon what makes The Cartel ever so slightly better than The Power of the Dog. It's the subplot about Pablo Mora, crime reporter on the local newspaer in Juarez, the frontline of the cartel war. Pablo is lazy, submissive, but he comes through in the end. Boy, does he come through. I can't offhand think of anything recent that has moved me so deeply as his last post. For many writers that would have been the whole story. Here it is just part of the mix. Other readers will be more stirred by other storylines. The point is, every reader will find something to treasure here.