Don Winslow (born October 31, 1953)[1] is an American political activist and retired author[2][3] best known for his crime novels including Savages, The Force and the Cartel Trilogy.
Winslow was born on Staten Island.[4] He grew up in Perryville, a beach town near the village of Matunuck, Rhode Island.[5][6][7] He credits his parents for preparing him to become a writer: his mother was a librarian and his father was a non-commissioned officer in the United States Navy who told stories and invited Navy friends around who told more. They inspired Winslow to become a storyteller himself.[6] He majored in African history at the University of Nebraska.[8] Winslow later earned a master's degree in military history.[4]
Career
Early career
After earning his master's degree, Winslow worked as an analyst for the Department of State in South Africa in the 1980s, before working as a safari guide in Kenya. Winslow returned to the U.S. in the late 1980s to work as a private investigator.[4]
Writing
While traveling between Asia, Africa, Europe and America, Winslow wrote his first novel, A Cool Breeze on the Underground, which was nominated for an Edgar Award and a Shamus Award for Best First Novel.[9]
Winslow's second book, The Trail to Buddha's Mirror, continued the Neal Carey saga. He followed that up with three more Neal Carey novels, Way Down on the High Lonely, for which he was a Dilys Award finalist, A Long Walk Up the Water Slide, and While Drowning in the Desert.
For his next novel, Winslow broke from the Neal Carey character to write the standalone Isle of Joy, about an ex-CIA agent who is pulled back into the world of espionage, this time as the target of his former agency and the FBI.
A film and publishing deal for his novel The Death and Life of Bobby Z, also a Barry Award finalist, for Best Novel, allowed Winslow to become a full-time writer and settle in California, the setting for many of his books.[citation needed]
Winslow co-created the NBC television series UC/Undercover with his friend and agent Shane Salerno.[10] The series ran one season and aired 13 episodes.
Winslow then published the Shamus Award finalist California Fire and Life, and Looking for a Hero.[9]
In 2005, Winslow published what would become the first book in his epic "Cartel Trilogy," The Power of the Dog, about obsessive DEA Agent Art Keller's quest to take down an El Chapo-esque Sinaloan cartel. The book earned rave reviews around the world and was a finalist for the Barry, Macavity, Hammett, and Dilys awards.[9]
Winslow then wrote The Winter of Frankie Machine, which garnered interest all over Hollywood and was eventually bought by Paramount Pictures for Robert De Niro to star in and Martin Scorsese to direct. During the development phase, screenwriter Eric Roth gave De Niro a book to read as research for the role. De Niro became so enthralled with that book – I Heard You Paint Houses – that he and Scorsese ended up adapting it into The Irishman. Winslow took it all in stride, even penning a humorous article on Deadline Hollywood jokingly titled “I Blame Eric Roth.”[11]
Winslow followed Frankie Machine with the first of his two Boone Daniels books, Dawn Patrol. Winslow was yet again a finalist for the Barry and Dilys Awards.[9]
After Savages, Winslow returned to the world of ultra-California cool cop-turned-PI Boone Daniels in The Gentlemen's Hour. The book was a 2010 finalist for the Gold Dagger Award.[9]
In 2011, Winslow wrote another standalone, Satori, a prequel to Trevanian's 1979 novel Shibumi. Winslow again earned rave reviews from critics and colleagues alike. Satori was purchased by Warner Brothers and Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way for DiCaprio to produce and star.[13]
The following year, Winslow returned to the world of Savages, writing the prequel The Kings of Cool. Yet again, his book was a Gold Dagger finalist for Best Crime Novel of the Year.[9]
2012 also saw Winslow given the Raymond Chandler Award, Italy's top lifetime achievement honor for masters of the thriller and noir literary genre. Past recipients have included Stephen King, John Le Carré, John Grisham, and Elmore Leonard.
In 2019, Winslow published the third and final installment of his Cartel Trilogy, The Border. It was named one of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, NPR, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The New York Post, The Dallas Morning News,The Irish Times,Booklist, and many others. The film rights to the trilogy had originally been purchased by 20th Century Fox but in 2019, due to the sprawling nature of the story and world therein, FX Networks acquired the rights from their sister studio to turn the novels into a TV series. Filming on the pilot is set to begin in late-2022.[15]
After concluding his Cartel Trilogy, Winslow published Broken, a collection of six short novellas all centered around the themes of crime, corruption, vengeance, justice, loss, and betrayal. Broken also earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews.
Winslow's next novel, City on Fire, is the first book in a planned trilogy about the feuding Moretti and Murphy crime families in Providence, Rhode Island, in the 1980s and 1990s.[16][17] The novel received critical acclaim and its screen rights were acquired by Sony to be adapted into a television series.[18]
In April 2022, Winslow announced his retirement from writing, to focus on his political video-making and activism. His City on Fire sequels are his final books.[19] In 2023, he started a book club on Twitter.[20]
Political views and activism
Winslow has spoken in favor of gun control, drug legalisation and reducing incarceration rates for non-violent crimes.[21][22] In 2016, Winslow wrote an op-ed for Esquire arguing that the legalisation of marijuana exacerbated the war on drugs and cartel violence.[23][22] In 2017, he criticized the then-proposed Trump wall, saying, "You can build the biggest, best, most beautiful wall – it doesn't matter if the gates are open, and the gates are open 24/7."[22]
During the 2020 presidential election, Winslow became politically active online, using his own money to champion liberal causes and criticize Donald Trump and his agenda. Winslow and Shane Salerno began creating political videos critical of the Trump administration for social media. On October 13, 2020, Don Winslow Films released a video critical of Trump prior to his campaign event in Pennsylvania. The video features Bruce Springsteen's song "Streets of Philadelphia" and has been viewed almost 10 million times. As of January 4, 2021, Winslow's videos had garnered over 135 million views.[24] As of April 2022, the total view count was over 250 million.[25]
A libel lawsuit was filed against Winslow on the basis of comments Winslow made in 2020 about an Irwin County Detention Center contractor, who Winslow had claimed performed illegal hysterectomies purportedly done at the direction of Donald Trump. In 2022 a district court ruled that the libel claims could go forward.[26]
Winslow said he writes from 5:30a.m. to 10 a.m. and then hikes six or seven miles before returning to work. He typically works on two books at a time, moving to the other when work on the first stalls. He said the longest he has gone without writing after a book is completed was five days. He has described writing as "an addiction".[8][27][28]
The time it takes him to write a book varies. The Death and Life of Bobby Z was written on the train between Dana Point, California and Los Angeles, one chapter per trip.[8][6]The Power of the Dog took six years to research and write, including a trip to Mexico to interview people with similar experiences as the book's characters.[29]
Personal life
Winslow's career as an investigator often took him to California to look into arson cases, as his storytelling skills helped explain cases to juries. In the mid-1990s, he moved to California with his wife, Jean, and their infant son, Thomas, and continued writing. They currently split their time between Julian, California,[8][27] and Rhode Island.
Winslow won the 2012 Raymond Chandler Award at the Courmayeur Noir Festival. Previous winners include John le Carré, John Grisham and Michael Connelly.[56]
Donald Frank Cheadle Jr. is an American actor. Known for his roles in film and television, he has received multiple accolades including two Golden Globe Awards, two Grammy Awards, and a Tony Award as well as nominations for an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards, and 11 Primetime Emmy Awards.
John Birmingham is a British-born Australian author, known for the 1994 memoir He Died with a Felafel in His Hand, the Axis of Time trilogy, and the well-received space opera series, the Cruel Stars trilogy.
Rian Craig Johnson is an American filmmaker. He made his directorial debut with the neo-noir mystery film Brick (2005), which received positive reviews and grossed nearly $4 million on a $450,000 budget. Transitioning to higher-profile films, Johnson achieved mainstream recognition for writing and directing the science-fiction thriller Looper (2012) to critical and commercial success. Johnson landed his largest project when he wrote and directed the space opera Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017), which grossed over $1 billion. He returned to the mystery genre with Knives Out (2019) and its sequel Glass Onion (2022), both of which earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay, respectively.
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Shane Salerno is an American screenwriter, producer, and Chief Creative Officer of The Story Factory, which has put 32 books on the New York Times bestseller list, with seven books hitting #1. His writing credits include the films Avatar: The Way of Water, Armageddon, Savages,Shaft, and the TV series Hawaii Five-0. He has written, co-written or rewritten six films that debuted at #1 at the box office, two separate films that were the highest grossing film of the year, and the third highest grossing film of all time.
The Power of the Dog is a 2005 crime/thriller novel by American writer Don Winslow, based on the DEA's involvement with the War on Drugs. The book was published after six years of writing and research by the author.
The Death and Life of Bobby Z, also known as Bobby Z and Let's Kill Bobby Z, is a 2007 American-German action film, directed by John Herzfeld, and starring Paul Walker, Laurence Fishburne, Olivia Wilde, and Joaquim de Almeida. Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group released the film direct-to-video in the United States. Don Winslow, who wrote the novel on which the film is based, acknowledged that the screen adaptation was not successful.
The Winter of Frankie Machine is a 2006 thriller novel by American writer Don Winslow.
Child 44 is a 2008 thriller novel by British writer Tom Rob Smith. It is the first novel in a trilogy featuring former MGB Agent Leo Demidov, who investigates a series of gruesome child murders in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union.
Adrian McKinty is a Northern Irish writer of crime and mystery novels and young adult fiction, best known for his 2020 award-winning thriller, The Chain, and the Sean Duffy novels set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. He is a winner of the Edgar Award, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, the Macavity Award, the Ned Kelly Award, the Barry Award, the Audie Award, the Anthony Award and the International Thriller Writers Award. He has been shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.
Jeremy Duns is a British author of spy fiction and the history of espionage.
Savages is a 2012 American action thriller film directed by Oliver Stone. It is based on Don Winslow's novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by Stone, Winslow, and Shane Salerno. It stars Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Benicio del Toro, Demián Bichir, Salma Hayek, Emile Hirsch and John Travolta. The film follows two marijuana growers, Chon, an ex-Navy SEAL, and Ben, who are best friends, as they confront the Mexican drug cartel that kidnapped their shared girlfriend.
Satori is a historical novel by American writer Don Winslow about the love of a man and a woman who practise the oldest professions of the world. The novel is not a prequel to Trevanian's novel Shibumi but tells instead of a largely unexplained period within that particular novel. Satori features the same central protagonist, assassin Nicholaï Hel. In Satori he carries out his first assassination under pressure from American agencies, for which among other things, he is to be rewarded with freedom and given citizenship of Costa Rica.
The Rembrandt Affair is a 2010 spy novel by Daniel Silva. It is the tenth in the Gabriel Allon series, based in the world of Israeli intelligence.
The Lock Artist is a 2010 standalone crime novel by American novelist Steve Hamilton, published by Minotaur Books. The story centers on a young man with a talent for lock picking.
Savages is a crime novel by American author Don Winslow, published in 2010. It was followed in 2012 by a prequel, The Kings of Cool.
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Michael Mann is an American filmmaker known for directing, producing, and writing various works of film and television.
Justin Kuritzkes is an American playwright, novelist, and screenwriter best known for writing the scripts for two of Luca Guadagnino's films, Challengers and Queer. He has also been the subject of media coverage because of his activities on YouTube, such as the 2011 video "Potion Seller".
Lou Berney is an American crime fiction author who has published six books since 1991. For his works, Berney has won multiple awards including an Anthony, Barry and Edgar for The Long and Faraway Gone. With November Road, Berney won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger while also winning additional Anthony and Barry awards. Apart from writing, Berney was a screenwriter whose written film, Angels Sing, was released in 2012. Berney has also taught at the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma City University during the 2010s.
↑ "Bio". Don Winslow. Archived from the original on March 3, 2011. Retrieved September 17, 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
1 2 3 Timberg, Scott (June 9, 2008). "Surfing shamus". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on September 17, 2024. Retrieved September 17, 2024.
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