I’ve been thinking recently about what makes reading Don Winslow’s books so damn enjoyable. Probably because that’s what I’ve been reading during the quarantine, and because he has a new one out this week, Broken (William Morrow, April 7, 2020), a collection of six short novels, several of which revisit characters and scenes from some old favorites. One of those favorites is Boone Daniels, the surf-bum-PI from The Dawn Patrol and The Gentlemen’s Hour, now back as a part-time bail-bonds agent. Another is Frankie Machine, last seen working the bait shop on the Ocean Beach pier. Winslow has become widely celebrated in recent years based largely on the tremendous and well-deserved success of the latter novels of his drug war trilogy, The Cartel and The Border. Those are monumental books, great achievements in modern crime fiction each. But I find myself drawn back again and again to the slightly quieter, rough-around-edges coastal novels, and I think it has something to do with the people. Maybe they’re just a little weirder on the beach.
The truth is, you can read thousands of pages in Winslow’s impressive, decades-spanning body of work without ever coming across a boring character. That, it seems to me, is the secret to what makes these books resonate with readers. His characters feel strongly about life, the way it’s ordered, the way it’s conducted. They have opinions about sauce recipes, ocean swells, condo layouts, loyalty, west coast jazz, the way coffee is made and consumed, the way to drive, preferably on the Pacific Coast Highway, and a host of other issues, big and small. These little foibles, preferences, and codes make them real. They make you want to spend time with these people, wherever they fall under traditional rubrics of good or bad, criminal or not. There’s blood pumping beneath every page.
In Broken, you get these very human moments in abundance. I caught up with Winslow just before the book’s release, while most of the country was in lockdown and many were sick and dying. He began the conversation by noting how uncomfortable he was talking about his book or himself at a time like this. Whether either of us ever did or could get comfortable with it, I don’t know, but I asked him about things anyway. Probably because I’d already finished the book and wanted a chance to think about these characters and their world just a little bit longer. We spoke about California crime fiction, Steve McQueen, socially-engaged thrillers, and the talmudic debates outside the Solana Beach Coffee Company that find their way into his work. Winslow is self-deprecating and solicitous, but when he gets going on a subject, there’s an intensity about him that can’t be suppressed, and that draws you in.
Dwyer Murphy: Six short novels collected in a book—that’s not a form you come across too often these days. I was excited to see it. So the first question that comes to mind, why novellas?
Don Winslow: For most of the last twenty years I’ve been writing big fat books. Books that are pretty epic in scale. The drug trilogy (The Power of the Dog, The Cartel, The Border) spans forty years. During the time I was writing the trilogy and also The Force, some other ideas came to me, ideas that weren’t epic. I didn’t think any would support a full novel, but they were more substantive than I might have wanted for short stories. I’d read and admired Stephen King’s novellas, Jim Harrison’s, and I thought these ideas might work in that middle range, which is new to me.
If a short story is a sprint, I didn’t want to do that. That middle distance was a nice changeup.
Murphy: Three of the novellas are set in Southern California. That’s terrain you haven’t been back to in fiction for a while. Was that part of the project with this collection?
Winslow: I’m just a real San Diego honk. I love it. I don’t know how many hundreds of times I’ve driven the PCH. I never get bored with it. The condo complex that features in “Crime 101” is a place I lived for four years. The coffee place, Solana Beach Coffee Company, is very real. The best breakfast burritos in captivity. That whole scene is very real. I haven’t had a chance to write about San Diego a lot. I did it in a couple of surf books. So I wanted to take those three stories and interweave place and characters. It was a lot of fun to do.
Murphy: The surf books are some of my favorites. They have a bit of a cult following, I think. I was excited to see those characters back on the page, Boone Daniels, Dave the Love God, the whole crew.
Winslow: You know every public appearance I’ve made since those books came out, somebody asked me, “are we gonna see Boone again?” One of the greatest compliments I ever received, one of my proudest moments as an author, came at this reading, where a late 20-something couple from Massachusetts who had moved to San Diego told me they had The Dawn Patrol on audio, and when they had friends visiting from Massachusetts, they drove them down the hill from Torrey Pine and would play that segment from The Dawn Patrol where Boone is making that same drive. That made me really happy.
Murphy: Were there other characters you were eager to return to?
Winslow: A character named Neal Carey appears. He was my first ever character. I wrote my first five books about him, as a twenty-something kid. He’s another one people ask me about. What happened to Neal? I started wondering, what if he became what he always wanted, a professor of lit? And he would be at UCSD. It was fun to do. Some other characters come back, too: Frankie Machine, Bobby Z. Part of the fun of these novellas was bringing them back in different ways.
Murphy: Coming back to old characters and scenes, did you feel like you learned something about yourself as a writer? How you’ve changed over the decades, I mean.
“I’m probably a little more compassionate, too. I’m less likely to be sarcastic. I still am sarcastic, but I’m a little less likely.”
Winslow: I think I’m more efficient. Whereas in my first book it might have taken me three paragraphs to describe a person or to get somewhere, it takes me one or two sentences now. That’s a big difference. And with age, I hate to say, I’ve picked up a little more perspective about humanity. You know, you get a little older, you’ve seen a little more, you’ve watched yourself change. When I first started writing Neal Carey I was a single guy. Now I’m a father of a thirty year-old, and I’ve been married coming up thirty-five years. You learn some things. I think I have a little more observation and insight than when I first started out, and that shows up in the writing. I’m probably a little more compassionate, too. I’m less likely to be sarcastic. I still am sarcastic, but I’m a little less likely. Maybe more patient with characters, their foibles and flaws. I think you fall in love someone because of their positive aspects. You stay in love because of their flaws. You learn to love those little things that used to annoy you. You miss them when they’re not there.
Murphy: Three of the novellas have dedications: “Crime 101” to Steve McQueen; “Zoo” to Elmore Leonard; and “Sunset” to Raymond Chandler. They’re all interesting to consider, but the McQueen dedication jumped out at me most. It’s such a palpable part of that story.
Winslow: Look, McQueen was the absolute embodiment of California cool. He still is, since he lives on in film. When I think about that era of the mid-Sixties, I don’t think about the hippies as much as I think about Steve McQueen and cool cars and the early surf music. So writing about Highway 101, it was great fun to think about what would it be like if you had a thief who was modeling himself on Steve McQueen? And what if the cop gets it? A cop who’s very un-Steve McQueen like. Lou Lubesnick, the name of which I got from a guy who used to sit around Solana Beach Coffee Company. I bring him back in the next couple of stories just because I like him. He was fun to write. But there’s also this real guy, Ron Lubesnick, whom I met sitting at those tables at the SBCC. Who grew up dirty poor in Chicago selling hot dogs in his mother’s stand and is now a millionaire living in one of those condos. Who is one of the nicest people I ever met even though we disagreed about everything. Those conversations the guys have in “Sunset,” about the to-go cups, those are literally conversations we had hanging around the SBCC.
Murphy: So you’re saying there was really a debate about how long you can continue bringing the same cup back to a restaurant and asking for more under the auspices of a free refill policy?
Winslow: Those are word for word quotes
Murphy: Where do you stand on the issue?
Winslow: I’m pretty strict about it. If you walk out the door, it’s over.
Murphy: I’m a former litigator, and I like a good technical argument. I was persuaded by Lubesnick’s argument that as long as you maintain the physical integrity of the cup, the refill is yours.
Winslow: These guys they go off on a week-long bicycle trip every year. I couldn’t make it work, but I wanted to be the sad wagon driver, just so I could listen to these debates. This guy, Lubesnick, he’s what I call a bad Republican. He just sucks as a Republican. Fiscally he’s a Republican but in terms of social issues he’s very liberal. And he calls me a bad Democrat for similar reasons. We argue a lot. Am I just talking? I can shut up and let you ask questions.
Murphy: No, this is what I came for.
Winslow: So we go to this coffee shop for years. About year two they come out with those loyalty cards. Ron, he comes every day and he says I don’t want this, they need the money, and why should I penalize a business I like by every ten times getting something free? It made me look at it in a different way.
Murphy: If you’re going to be a faithful customer in any event, the business is losing on that deal.
Winslow: Right, and now I never use them. Someone gave me one the other day, I said no, I like your place, I like your food, I like you. These debates, I could sit there and listen to them all day.
Murphy: Speaking of bad Republicans and bad Democrats, it occurs to me, you have this vast readership that cuts across some social divides, maybe because you write characters from all walks and viewpoints. Cops, criminals, traffickers, strivers, everyone. I’m thinking about certain passages from The Border, riding La Bestia train north. Or reading a story like “The Last Ride,” which involves a border patrol agent who sees a girl in a cage and can’t take it anymore, I wonder if for some of your readers, this is how they’re learning about these tragedies. And maybe that has a real impact on them. I don’t know how you could read some of these stories without being moved to question a few of your beliefs.
Winslow: Well I hope so. Look, every headline becomes a stereotype and a cliche. So one thing I was trying to do, particularly with The Border and with “The Last Ride,” was to say, let’s look at the specifics. Instead of the macro, let’s look at it in the micro. I wanted to bring people closer to the reality of an individual life. Let’s see what this immigrant’s life looks like. Let’s spend some time with this addict. Readers see them in a different way. And I think that’s part of a novelists’s job.
Let me give you can example. I live in a very conservative area. I live out in cowboy country on a ranch, surrounded by ranchers. I live also in a highly Mexican-American area, but most of my neighbors, the ranchers, are very conservative. I’m the Democrat who gets sent out to talk to these old ranchers when we have a school bond issue. Because I get along with these guys. So I’m the designated liberal. Go talk to this rancher. The other month, sadly, we had three immigrant women die up in these hills. The coyotes dropped them off and pointed north and they walked into these hills and there was a sudden snowstorm. Three out of the five women died. Awful. I’m looking out my window at those hills right now. There is no doubt in my mind that if any one of my neighbor ranchers, who all voted for Trump, had known those women were floundering around lost out there, they would have been on horses or on foot looking for them. There’s no doubt in my mind. And so with stories like “The Last Ride,” I was trying to harken back to some older conservative values that were more humanistic. And kinder. And there was, and maybe still is, I hope, a code of conduct.
Murphy: Codes of conduct often find their way into your work. Any particular codes you abide by as a writer? Any rituals or disciplines you feel a little religious about?
“Writers write. Before it’s a noun it’s a verb. It’s the job I’ve always wanted and I’m grateful to have it and therefore I treat it with respect and discipline.”
Winslow: Well yeah, it sounds so glib but I don’t mean it that way. Writers write. Before it’s a noun it’s a verb. It’s the job I’ve always wanted and I’m grateful to have it and therefore I treat it with respect and discipline. I don’t like getting up at five in the morning. I might want to stay up late and watch TV, but I don’t because I need to be at work at five thirty. I don’t always feel like exercising, but I don’t write strong unless I feel strong,. So those are the disciplines I have. In terms of any kind of code, I suppose it’s try to make it quality.
Murphy: You’ve become a pretty prominent advocate for other writers in recent years, especially in the crime fiction world. Is that a conscious thing you’ve set out to do?
Winslow: It’s that more and more I’m able to. Twenty years ago, ten years ago, I couldn’t help out any other writer. I was drowning myself, and nobody was gonna listen to me. Now a few people will, and so it’s nice to be able to pass it on a little bit. I feel very strongly: if you sit down and struggle with this and you work with the empty page and you give that serious effort, then you’re a writer. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not. You’re a writer and that makes us colleagues. And I respect you for it. And on the rare occasion when I can be of some help, I’m honored to do it.
