Don Winslow is Just Getting Started
Don is coming for Donald (Photo: Robert Gallagher).
Don Winslow has published his last book.
Fans of the master of crime thrillers— many enlisted in Winslow’s Army, his legion of social media followers—are in mourning. Winslow has written 25 novels, from 1991’s A Cool Breeze on the Underground to his latest, City of Ruins (the final volume in the Danny Ryan Trilogy), and won a haul of literary awards, including Edgars, Shamuses, Macavitys, and Steel Daggers.
I’ve known Don for 15 years, though we never spoke face to face until last week. One day, I’ll take him up on the offer to visit his favorite Rhode Island dive bar for “real clam chowder based on broth, not that horrible sticky stuff most places call chowder.” Meanwhile, he’ll be busy trying to keep Donald Trump from moving back into the White House.
Winslow, 70, isn’t really quitting; he’s just got bigger fish to fry. After becoming a force in publishing and Hollywood (he’s represented by The Story Factory, the powerhouse agency run by his friend and collaborator Shane Salerno), he wants to safeguard American democracy.
He’s famous for writing about undercover cops, cartels, and corrupt moguls, and found success across genres and platforms. Why stop now?
“That’s a complex question,” Winslow says via video conference from his California home. “I don’t feel retired right now. I have a book coming out, and I’m also very active in the political sphere on social media. In a sense, I’m not retired. It’s just a different kind of writing.”
He already running Don Winslow Films, a video-driven digital operation focused on thwarting MAGA Republicans.
“Look, I think I’ll always write,” he says. “What I don’t think I’ll always do is publish.”
There’s no shortage of writers who’d kill to have the career Winslow is leaving behind, but his stardom came after a long climb. “When I look back on my career, most of it was tough years. I’m one of those rare cats that reached some kind of success in my fifties. Prior to that, I was slogging it out. I don’t regret any of it, but it takes a toll.”
He is grateful for what he’s achieved.
“Being a writer is what I’ve always wanted, since I was a little kid,” he says. “Life was kind enough to give it to me, not to mention the readers and booksellers were kind enough to give it to me.” Winslow takes a beat. “Listen, I think we’re at a point in this country where our democracy is on the edge of a cliff. It may not be huge, but I have a following. The videos I’ve made in service of truth in politics have had—are you ready for this?—300 hundred million views. If my team and I have that kind of outreach at this point in time, I think that’s where our energy should be going.”
Winslow thinks his followers are devoted because he’s straight with them. “Whether in fiction or the political sphere, I’ve tried to write honest books that are soundly researched. They have a point of view, no question, but I have the facts to back up anything I write that is based in reality. I think that readers have a sense that I’ve always written from the heart.”
That passion was instilled at an early age. Winslow’s parents, Henry and Ottis, were a Navy Chief Petty Officer and a librarian. They filled their home in the seaside town of Perryville, R.I., with books, and encouraged him and his sister Kristine to read as much as they wanted—and whatever they wanted.
“My dad was a sailor. He was 18 years old on Guadalcanal. I have no idea about his experience, but when he came home he said he wanted three things: To sail around on the water, to visit every zoo in Europe, and to read books. He did all three.”
“Expectations for kids in our small Rhode Island fishing village were not high,” Winslow continues. “But I could walk a quarter mile to the library and be anywhere in the world, just by browsing the aisles.”
One day, he decided to check out a book on the Battle of Guadalcanal, where 7,100 Americans and 19,000 Japanese fighters died during World War II. “The librarian made me read aloud to her to prove I could handle the book. I told my mom, and she went straight there and said, ‘Hi, I’m Don Winslow’s mother. When he comes to the desk with a book, you check it out. If he’s late returning it, then we’ll talk. But he’s not going to do reading tests for you.’”
Young Don and Kristine—an author of 42 romance novels—never had a set bedtime if they were reading. “There was no lights-out time in our home.”
His father’s diverse crowd of Navy buddies contributed to Winslow’s narrative gifts. “They’d all sit around and I would get under the dining-room table to listen. Their stories got better every year,” he says.
In Winslow’s junior year of high school, an English teacher recognized his potential. “The first day of class, we had a pop quiz, and I hadn’t read the book. I wrote on the top of the page, 'Dear Ms. Heimer, I could probably BS my way through this, but I don’t want to insult your intelligence, or mine. Flunk me.’ The next day I got my quiz back with a big red F on it, and a note that said, Come see me,” he says.
“I go to see her and she says don’t come to class anymore. Wait, what? This is great! Then she said, come see me at lunch tomorrow. That entire year, I met with her at lunch every day, and she ate the sandwich my mother made for me while she gave me articles and short stories to read and then discuss with her. If I seemed hungry, she would give me some Triscuits.” Winslow says with a laugh. “We stayed in touch, and when she came to my first book signing, she showed up with a box of Triscuits. I’ll never forget her. She saved my life.”
At the University of Nebraska, Winslow was accepted into a special African studies program that sent him to South Africa in the apartheid era. “I helped smuggle money in for schools in Soweto,” he says. “You might call me a charity mule.” That fueled his activism. “In the bad old days in South Africa, you saw corruption on a mega level that helped you understand that while racial prejudice was real, at the end of the day it was about money and power—the people who have it and the people who don’t.”
“I’ve always taken the side of the people who don’t,” he says, taking a moment to gaze out a window facing the Pacific Ocean. “That’s what I feel politically as well. If someone attacks something we love, or people we love, with their lies and their filth, we’ll drop the gloves.”
Winslow traveled the world and worked as private investigator and theater manager before achieving recognition as a writer. The rise of Trump ignited his outrage — and a determination to do something. “When Trump started saying horrible things about Mexicans and Mexican Americans, well, these are my neighbors,” he says. “These are the people I go to weddings and funerals and christenings and school-board meetings and birthday parties with.”
After a career writing about underdogs, his new chapter is about defending those he sees in the real world. “These are people I love,” Winslow says of Trump’s targets. “We want people to know that they don’t have to do it alone.”
I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger
The first author event I ever covered was for Enger’s gorgeous debut, Peace Like A River, in 2001. Twenty-three years later, his talent is still luminous. I Cheerfully Refuse tells the story of Rainy, a man who has lost his beloved wife Lark. When he sails Lake Superior in search of her, he finds the inland sea is sentient and his task is complicated by all kinds of hazards. It’s a Midwestern retelling of the tale of Orpheus, who traveled into the underworld in order to rescue his wife Eurydice. Enger infuses the story with elements of legend without swamping Rainy’s sailboat with the mythical. It makes for a lyrical adventure.
Table for Two by Amor Towles
