>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
>> Maureen Corrigan: Thank you.
Thank you.
Welcome, everybody.
Thank you for coming out
on this beautiful morning.
I had about five different
outfits that I was planning to wear
for today, and they all got shelved.
Welcome to the National
Book Festival.
I have the pleasure today
of interviewing Don Winslow.
And as some of you maybe read
me in the Washington Post.
I'm a regular mystery columnist
for the Washington Post as well
as a book critic for Fresh
Air on National Public Radio,
both of which are supporters
of the National Book Festival.
After my conversation with Don, he
will be signing books from 11 to 12,
and I think once you hear
some more about The Force
if you haven't had the
pleasure of reading it already,
you will want to grab a
book and get it signed.
I was in St. Louis in April.
I was at a fundraiser for
the St. Louis Library.
It was a fundraiser
organized around the theme
of a mystery night,
a suspense night.
Reed Farrell Coleman, who is a
fantastic hard boiled detective
fiction writer, sponsors the event
and he had gotten other great
writers like Peter Blowner,
Hillary Davidson, Blake Crouch
to come to the event and to talk
about their suspense fiction.
And guess what?
All of those terrific writers
were talking about this novel.
They were saying to me,
"You've got to read it.
This is the suspense
novel of the year."
They were so in awe of the research
of the writing, quality
of Don's novel.
I went home and as you can
see, I started to read it.
These are all my Post It Notes.
It's a fantastic police
procedural --
it's a fantastic novel
about New York,
but like all the greatest crime
fiction, it's also a terrific novel
about that struggle
between justice and the law,
and the gap between
justice and the law.
Don has a biography, the likes
of which I've never seen before
at the National Book Festival.
I mean, in addition to being a
guide in China to leading a safari,
a photographic safari, he's
also written -- what is it?
19 novels?
Yes, 19 novels, many
of which have been made
into major motion pictures.
He also was awarded the L.A. Times
Book Prize in 2016 and I am just
so excited to have him here at the
festival and to be able to talk
with him about The Force.
So please welcome Don Winslow.
[ Applause ]
So Don, I always imagined that
these audiences are composed
of people who've already had the
good sense to read your book,
but some folks who haven't.
Could you do the two minute sort of
summary of what The Force is about?
>> Don Winslow: Yeah,
wow [inaudible].
If people want to move up, by
the way, it's not Sea World.
You won't get splashed.
You don't need a cover,
and the author is relatively
harmless in this case.
So please move up if you'd like.
The Force refers to a fictional
special unit inside the New York
Police Department that's
been charged with taking guns
and drugs off the streets of upper
Manhattan, upper west side, Harlem,
Inwood, Washington Heights.
And they're very good
at what they do.
They get to be too
good at what they do,
and I'm not giving
anything really away.
It's in the first few
pages of the book.
They make one of the
biggest heroin and cash busts
in New York City history, and they
keep half of it for themselves
and things go from there.
>> Maureen Corrigan: One of
the things that your colleagues
in the suspense world were raving
about was the amount of research
that went into this novel,
but of course didn't bog
down in any way the narrative,
but they were just talking
about the authenticity of the
details, and the way cops speak
to each other and the kind of
situations that they encounter
that you don't get from
your usual cop TV show.
Talk a little bit about the
research, that process of research.
How did you even get --
most of them are guys --
guys who do that kind of
work to open up to you?
>> Don Winslow: You know what?
I call it the chair factor.
First of all, I've been
around cops my whole life.
My godfather was a cop.
I worked in New York City as a P.I.
in Times Square.
So I dealt with cops a lot
so I've worked with cops.
I've worked cases against
cops in Los Angeles.
So I've been around them
my whole adult life.
But specifically for this book,
it was a matter not so much
of having interviews
but becoming the chair.
Do you know how when you buy
a new chair or a new sofa?
For the first couple of weeks you go
in the room, and that's all you see.
It's a chair.
It's the sofa.
It's new. It's there,
dominates the room.
A couple of weeks later,
it's the chair.
And so I think for
researching any book
like this is largely a
matter of becoming the chair.
Just to be there.
And it's like any relationship.
It takes time and to sit and to
listen and to hear what they say
and to ask fewer and
fewer questions really.
>> Maureen Corrigan:
Did you ride along?
Did you -- yeah, yeah.
>> Don Winslow: Sorry,
I interrupted you.
>> Maureen Corrigan: No.
I mean, you're in -- when you
read The Force, you the reader are
in those tenement hallways doing
what you guys call the vertical.
It's going up the stairs.
>> Don Winslow: Up and
down the stairs, yeah.
>> Maureen Corrigan: You're talking
to the informants in the alleys.
You have a real sense of
where folks who do this kind
of work would meet an informant
and what the terrain is like.
As your characters
point out in The Force,
cops don't like to bare their souls
to anybody who's not in the club.
>> Don Winslow: Yeah.
>> Maureen Corrigan:
So was it the P.I.
credentials that --
>> Don Winslow: No, not at all.
Typically cops don't like P.I.'s.
So that was not an advantage at all.
No, it was -- I can't tell you how
many times I heard only other cops
can understand me.
Why don't we talk to other cops?
And I think that that's a
real factor, and I get it.
I understand why.
Again, it was a matter of patience.
And it was a matter
of, I think, empathy.
I rarely go in and
ask what did you do?
What happened?
We kind of already
know those things.
And from being around and going
on ride-alongs, but of the sort
of conversation I'd start and
some of these conversations went
on for years by the way, I would
simply say tell me about it.
Keep it as open-ended as possible,
and there were veteran cops
and retired cops and my wife came
along on some of these actually,
which was a big help because I think
that they opened up to her maybe
in ways they wouldn't have opened
up to me, talking about cases
that had happened 10, 20 years ago
that I don't think
they ever talked about.
And all of a sudden, you're looking
at this very tough veteran homicide
cop, tears streaming down his face.
>> Maureen Corrigan: I can
understand that from some
of the stories that you had the
characters tell in the book.
>> Don Winslow: Yeah.
They're all true.
>> Maureen Corrigan: Yeah, yeah.
>> Maureen Corrigan: Did you
record those conversations?
>> Don Winslow: No, no, no, no.
Never. Don't record.
Don't take notes.
Nobody wants that.
It makes you instantly unwelcome.
And I'm not a journalist.
I don't -- I try to make it as
realistic and as factually driven
as I can, but I don't have the
responsibility that journalist has
for absolute truth and accuracy.
I'm still a fiction writer.
But no, for me to have had a
microphone would not have worked
in the situation at all or even to
be sitting there with the legal pad
that I would have liked to
have had and taking things
down would have inhibited
those conversations
and inhibited those moments.
I wouldn't have been the chair.
Yeah.
>> Maureen Corrigan:
Did any of them ask
if they could read
what a draft of the --
>> Don Winslow: No.
No. I took that off the table.
Listen, some of them have
really liked the book.
Others have not.
Some -- a little bit of both,
and that's what I expected,
but for the most part, the reaction
has been very positive, but no.
I would never let a subject read.
Maybe for factual things,
could you check on this?
Is that realistic or
that sort of thing,
but to give pages or chapters, no.
>> Maureen Corrigan: It's a hard
time to write about the police.
>> Don Winslow: It is.
>> Maureen Corrigan: And you
dramatize that in The Force as well.
And a few times in this novel you
have characters making a variation
of kind of the same speech,
but it's an important speech
where these detectives
say you're not the one
who goes up those stairs.
You're not the one speaking
usually to a bureaucrat.
You're not the one who
breaks in the door.
You're not the one who
has to do this dirty work.
So don't judge us.
>> Don Winslow: Yeah.
>> Maureen Corrigan: And I think as
a novelist you'd have to walk kind
of a fine line here because you
wanted obviously to write this kind
of morally complex novel, but I
guess the times that we live in now
where cops have to deal
with accusations of racism
and sometimes maybe they're
founded and sometimes they're not.
It must have made your
job harder in terms
of dramatizing these characters
and giving them a fully
realized life and role.
>> Don Winslow: Yeah.
It is a difficult time
to write about cops,
a difficult time to be a cop.
It's a difficult time
to be, I think,
particularly a young
African American
in treacherous situations with cops.
I think that we need to look
at that racial situation
and know that that's very real.
And I write about it in the book.
I'll probably regret saying
this, but I'm not very interested
in morality when I'm writing.
I'm not interested in
saying that's a good guy.
That's a bad guy.
This is right.
This is wrong.
I think it's my job is to take
the reader into a world that he
or she otherwise couldn't go into
or if they do know that world,
to maybe show it to them in a
slightly different way and to do
that I need to get inside the
character's heads whether they're
clean cops or dirty
cops or drug dealers
or informants or whatever it is.
If I'm going to do my job well,
then I need to be subjective
when I'm actually typing
when I'm actually writing.
I can't be interested in
stepping outside the character
and saying that's right.
That's wrong.
That's good.
That's bad.
>> Maureen Corrigan: Another thing
that comes up a couple of times
in the novel is this idea of every
institution believing its own
mythology, whether it's
the organized crime,
whether it's the mob,
whether it's the police force,
whether it's an academic
institution.
They've both got their
own mythology.
And one of the things
I admired so much
about The Force is you've got some
of the mythic elements
of the police procedure.
The young cop -- the young detective
who has to learn the ropes,
some of those characters who
we read these stories for.
But you sort of -- as a
novelist, you seem to be able
to surmount the mythology
and break through.
I wonder how much as a writer you're
thinking about the formula and how
to tinker with it as you're writing.
>> Don Winslow: Yeah, I was as a
kid very influenced by those sort
of classic 1970's books and
films, The French Connection,
Serpico, Prince of the City.
I knew the prince of the city, a
friend of mine, a friend to Reed's.
And they were part of what inspired
me to want to be a crime writer.
If I could tell stories like that,
that would be a great way to live.
So we're all aware,
I think, of the --
of that and the trophies
that exist within that genre.
I think sometimes though what I
try to do is acknowledge them.
They're very real and partly
they're real because they're real
because those characters
in those situations exist.
But then sort of point the
story true north toward those
and then kick it a little bit.
You know what I mean?
Just -- if you nudge it
like five degrees off center
when you start a chapter
or start a sequence,
then sometimes interesting
things can happen.
>> Maureen Corrigan: So you
must know that I'm going
to ask you how you got into
writing from the world of action,
being a P.I., traveling it
seems like around the globe?
What made you decide that
you could try your hand
at actually writing
one of these things?
>> Don Winslow: I've
always wanted to be a writer
since I was a little kid,
but the world didn't agree
for a long time with
that assessment.
So I had to make a living.
As you alluded to, I
majored in African history,
which makes you a hard
core unemployable.
The only person in the world that
has ever managed to make a living
at it was Dane Kennedy, my
African History professor sitting
over there.
He took all the money the rest of
us could have made and kept it.
So I went out to become a safari
guide and all that kind of thing,
but then I think for a while I
wouldn't come here to lie to you,
and I think for a while
I just lost confidence,
thinking that can I really do this?
Can I pull this off?
And I was cobbling together a
living doing various things,
leading photographic safaris,
directing Shakespeare in England,
being a P.I., various
times of the year,
seasonally doing that kind of work.
And then I heard Joe Wombow
[assumed spelling] on the radio say
that when he was an L.A. homicide
investigator that he wanted
to be a writer and that he told
himself he would write ten pages a
day no matter what.
And I said to myself, well I
can't do ten, but I could do five.
I could just do -- and so I did.
And I was in a tent in Kenya
with amoebic dysentery.
I weighed 99 pounds,
and I thought no,
but I'm going to write five
pages a day no matter what.
And then three years
later, I have my first book.
I thought it was my first book.
The first 14 publishers did not.
My first book, but the 15th
did and I've been very,
very blessed, very lucky.
I've been under contract since then.
>> Maureen Corrigan:
Writing in a tent in Kenya,
you're going into Hemingway
territory there.
Who --
>> Don Winslow: Literally, no, no.
Our cook was a very old man
named Katoya was a young man
and an assistant on the
Hemingway green hills of Africa.
>> Maureen Corrigan: Oh, please.
>> Don Winslow: Safari.
And the only words in English
that he spoke were Johnny Walker.
But he and I would
have conversations
about Papa Hemingway in Swahili.
>> Maureen Corrigan: I -- slight
digression, I had the opportunity
to see Hemingway's
house in Sun Valley.
>> Don Winslow: Oh, is that right?
>> Maureen Corrigan:
Two summers ago.
And that's of course where
he committed suicide.
It's an eerie place because you
can't open any of the windows.
They're all Plexiglass.
>> Don Winslow: Wow.
>> Maureen Corrigan: And has
a real sealed in feeling.
>> Don Winslow: Yeah.
>> Maureen Corrigan: Wow.
Who else did you read?
Womba?
>> Don Winslow: Everyone
you'd expect.
>> Maureen Corrigan: Ed McBain?
>> Don Winslow: Sure.
Ed McBain, and I was very aware
you have to be aware of Ed McBain
when you're writing an NYPD novel.
You just do.
Lawrence Block was a huge influence.
Elmore Leonard, of
course, Mr. Leonard.
Shortly before he passed away, I
got to spend 45 minutes with him
on the phone, 45 of the
happiest minutes of my life.
I've been in awe of him forever.
He got on the phone, and he said,
"Don Winslow, you were two years old
when I wrote [inaudible]."
And I said, "Yes, Mr. Leonard,
but I tried to read it."
>> Maureen Corrigan: Nice.
>> Don Winslow: He has the
most charming way of putting me
in my place, but who would you
expect, Raymond Chandler of course.
I can go on and on.
Charles Wilford, John D. McDonald,
Ross McDonald, all of those people,
James Elroy, T. Jefferson Parker
who has since become a dear friend.
I'm always afraid of answering
that question, leaving someone out.
So I read everybody.
I read on stakeouts, which is
probably why I was a lousy P.I.
Something just happened.
>> Maureen Corrigan: Usually in --
at least in the classic novels
like the [inaudible] novels,
Marlo is reading and then looks
up just the right moment,
but I guess --
>> Don Winslow: Yeah, yeah.
She was [inaudible].
Trumpets played.
That never happened to me.
I got the blonde and beautiful part.
No trumpets.
>> Maureen Corrigan: Well,
this is a serious novel
but its got its lighter moments,
and one of the episodes I really
enjoyed is when The Force,
group of elite detectives --
Denny Malone, the head of The Force
decides he needs to reward the guys
who work with him, and they go
out on bowling night,
which is actually what?
>> Don Winslow: Drunken,
drug filled orgy.
But yeah, I mean, the scene
that I like in that is
when they all sit around at dinner.
Bowling night starts with
you have to order steaks
at a very expensive old fashioned
place called Gallagher's,
and you must wear a suit, and
you must wear French cufflinks
and you really have to do it up.
And they sit, and they order steaks
because mob guys hang out in there,
and if they see cops ordering
anything less expensive it lessens
their power and prestige,
which is the truth.
So they sit around and tell stories.
And those are all true
stories by the way.
>> Maureen Corrigan: I too liked
the detail about the steak,
and it feeds into a pattern where
these detectives are very aware
of appearance and when
you're out on the streets,
how they're carrying themselves.
So that they're not under estimated.
That must be -- I would think that
would be a huge psychic strain year
after year to sort of always
have that double consciousness
of how you're being perceived and --
>> Don Winslow: I think it's
all a huge psychic strain.
By the way, everyone and
their dog tried to take
that sequence out of the book.
>> Maureen Corrigan: Really?
>> Don Winslow: Yeah, yeah
because it's just four guys sitting
around for about 40 pages
telling old stories.
>> Maureen Corrigan:
That's a great sequence.
>> Don Winslow: And everyone
tried to cut it and take it out,
and I got really stubborn about it
and just kept writing
[inaudible], leave it alone.
It stays in.
It stays in.
But yeah, I think it is
a strain, but these sort
of rock star cops are
very aware of image.
And they have a charisma about
them and a magnetism about them
that is palpable when you step
into the room, not just in New York
when you meet these guys anywhere.
And women by the way as well.
And they're very, very aware of it.
And it helps them succeed in their
jobs, but it's also a survival tool.
It really is.
It's an instant sort of warning that
creates distance and space and time
for them to think of the solution of
the problem that's in front of them
and to persuade people to do
what they want them to do.
>> Maureen Corrigan:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You do mention that the
two female detectives
who make appearances here, one
of them more than the other,
that they're tougher than
anybody you're likely to meet.
And I guess there too
you would have to be.
>> Don Winslow: They have to be.
I mean, the women cops, it's still
the truth, have to be twice as good
to get to that position, and they
are very, very tough, very smart.
You wouldn't mess with them.
>> Maureen Corrigan:
I wouldn't want to.
>> Don Winslow: In addition
to being a really --
I've run out of adjectives --
outstanding police procedural,
this is a great novel
about New York,
and I was born in New
York, I told you.
I teach a course at Georgetown
on New York literature.
Maybe you'd like to come.
>> Don Winslow: I'd love to.
Let's go now.
>> Maureen Corrigan: They're
all sleep [inaudible] hangovers
this morning.
It's Saturday morning.
>> Don Winslow: As opposed
to the book festival
where no one's doing that.
>> Maureen Corrigan: But one of the
things we talk about in my course is
that New York literature is about
location, location, location.
It's about boundariness, and I think
you really dramatized that here.
Would you talk about the locations
and the lines that you don't cross,
the streets that you don't cross.
>> Don Winslow: Yeah.
First of all, it's terrifying
writing a New York novel
because there's no
such thing as a single.
There's no such thing as a base hit.
It's a strike out or a home run.
And -- but I finally felt I
was at a point in my career
where I had the chops, I
had the talent to do it.
New York for me, I refer to
as the small gods of place.
I'm an upper west side
and Harlem guy.
And one thing I never get tired
of, I did it just the other day,
is walking up and down Broadway.
Never get tired of it.
It's always evocative and
beautiful even sometimes
in its shabbiness is beautiful.
As the years go by as they do,
some of those places that were sort
of sacred to you go away.
The burger joint on 78th and
Broadway where I ate every meal
for two years and this club,
that corner as it changes,
but they still exist in a
sort of ghost-like fashion.
But boundaries in New York, when
I first moved up to 104th Street
as a young guy, your friends
looked at you like they were
about to give you a wake, like they
would never, ever see you again.
And certainly it was
small arms fire.
One of the things that I was walking
past the other night was that was
where that guy was killed.
This is where this person was shot.
I remember dealing with -- making a
small cocaine buy on the job here.
And so there were certain
things you didn't cross.
And I think that that's broken
down to a certain extent,
but in those days that
was an ethnic call.
I'd get out of the
subway at 103rd Street.
On the west side were Haitians and
on the east side were Puerto Ricans,
and they were lobbing
bottles like mortar shots.
So you'd come out of the subway
putting something over your head
or when gunfire would start in my
building, I'd get in the bathtub,
dry bathtub and read because
it's hard for a bullet
to get through a thick bathtub.
Things have obviously
changed a lot in New York,
but in some neighborhoods no,
in some of the neighborhoods.
And I'm not at liberty to say
that some of the neighborhoods
where I went on ride-alongs is
still very, very much that way
and the hostility toward
police was palpable.
You felt it.
You heard it.
>> Maureen Corrigan: One of the
things that has changed in New York
as so many neighborhoods
have gone up is
that the middle class is
sort of on the fringes.
And you've, of course, your
cops live on Staten Island.
>> Don Winslow: Yeah.
>> Maureen Corrigan: To me,
that's a very vivid picture
of here are these men and women
who patrol the streets who try
to keep order, but they're
almost kind of exiled
to this island on the fringes.
>> Don Winslow: Yes,
financially and culturally.
>> Maureen Corrigan: Yeah, yeah.
>> Don Winslow: Yeah.
For the most part, cops can't
afford to live where they patrol.
>> Maureen Corrigan: Yeah.
>> Don Winslow: Which by the way
creates a host of other problems
that are probably too complicated
for us to get into today.
But when you talk about police
policy and things that are going on,
that's one of the huge factors.
But that's been true
in New York for years.
You come from Sunnyside,
huge cop environment area.
Staten Island where I
was born, same thing.
We used to say on Staten Island
you have three career choices,
cop, fireman, criminal.
Crime writer, close.
And there were streets on Staten
Island that were depopulated
of men the day after 9/11 because
there were so many cops and firemen
who lived there, and you
drive down those streets now,
still and you feel
that sorrow, that loss.
>> Maureen Corrigan: I want to
throw out one more question to you
and then we'll open
this up to the audience,
but yet another thing I
admire about The Force,
you keep that plot growing.
You do double crosses.
You do triple crosses.
It's not until the end of The
Force that you actually can figure
out what's going to happen.
How do you do that kind of plot?
That huge, sweeping plot
where so many digressions.
>> Don Winslow: Yeah, it's my
least favorite part of the job.
I like story.
I don't really like plot,
but you have to have one.
They make you.
Rewriting -- there's an old
martial arts saying how do you carve
a tiger?
And the answer is you
take a big block of wood
and then you cut away everything
that doesn't look like a tiger.
And that's the case in
writing a book like this.
It's probably half again
as long in manuscript form.
And I write like really fast
like I'm afraid to get caught
on the first few drafts, but
long around draft ten or 11,
then I'm really thinking a lot
more about structure, about plot,
about the reader and the
experience that the reader's having
and you just keep moving it
around until it's a tiger.
>> Maureen Corrigan:
Draft or 10 or 11.
I'm going to tell my
students that on Tuesday.
>> Don Winslow: I wish
it were just 10 or 11.
It's usually more like
14, 15 or more.
>> Maureen Corrigan: Well, let's
open things up to the audience.
I'm sure people have loads
of questions for you.
>> I do. Thank you.
Good morning.
Your books are terrific.
>> Don Winslow: Thank you.
>> I'd like to ask you to sort of
talk about the cartel which deals
with a large complex
violent organization
that is breaking the law.
In The Force, there's a large
complex can be violent organization
charged with enforcing the
law and your perspectives
on those two organizations
and where they're similar
and where they're different
and whether it was any sort
of purpose -- it might not
be the right word in terms
of doing the cartel and then
following it up with The Force
in terms of what you're
trying to say?
>> Don Winslow: Yeah, thank you.
It's a very astute question.
Let me answer the last one
first and then kind of go back.
I had no intent to create
sort of a moral equivalence
between The Force and the cartel.
Obviously, both are
large organizations.
Both deal with violence.
Both are corrupt to
a certain degree.
The cartels, Mexican drug cartels
which I've written a
lot about are evil.
They just are.
Not enough bad things can
happen to them to suit me.
I certainly don't feel
that way about the police.
And by the way, The Force is
dedicated to 187 police officers
who were killed, murdered
during the time
that I was just typing the
manuscript, writing the book.
Not even researching it.
But they both are large
organizations,
and certainly there are similarities
between any organized
crime organization
and any large police force.
They're both hierarchical.
They both have resort
to violence and force,
and they are definite subcultures
where information is currency,
and that's what I find
fascinating about them.
The other thing, of course, is that
they have a symbiotic relationship.
You don't get one without the other.
And they're aware of that symbiosis
particularly on the upper levels.
So for a cop like Danny Malone
and an organization like this
to do his job, he has
to have relationships
with mob guys and with drug dealers.
You can't do it otherwise.
Same with DEA.
You have an adversarial
relationship with most of them,
but you have to have a cooperate
and symbiotic relation with others
of them in order to do the job, and
that gets to be tremendously morally
and ethically and emotionally
complex.
Thank you.
Yes, I can't see.
So hi.
>> Hi. I first became aware
of your work in the 1990's
with the New York [inaudible] books,
the first of which
is probably the one
that I was [inaudible]
rejected by the 14 publishers.
>> Don Winslow: It was, yeah.
>> I thought they were magnificent.
You wrote five of them,
and I read all of them.
And then you stopped.
So my question is why?
>> Don Winslow: I wrote
five Neal Carey books.
When I first started doing this,
sir, I thought that's what you did
because of who I was reading really.
I thought you created a
character, a detective
and then you followed it through.
A number of reasons.
One, none of you were buying.
And so I couldn't make
a living at it.
But also I think I was
getting a little bit bored
and a little bit boring.
I think that some folks do
series tremendously well,
and we can all name those
authors, Jane Lee Burke,
and the late sadly Robert
Parker, and there's so many.
I don't think I was doing
it particularly well long
around book four or five.
But I might come back to it.
I might reintroduce Neal
here in a little while.
>> Thank you.
>> Don Winslow: Thank you, sir.
>> Hello, and thank you for coming
and also I wanted to thank you
for making all of your --
thank you for making all
of your books available
in audio as soon
as you do [crosstalk] read them all
the same day everyone else does.
So thank you.
>> Don Winslow: Pleasure.
>> I'm curious.
You said that you don't really
think about the morality
of what you're writing about.
You sort of do it factually,
but it seems like you must --
I would imagine you
must think about that
when you're contemplating what
book to write because you write --
I won't say sympathetic, but at
least you humanize characters
from the mob, from the drug
cartels, from the police
when they're not exactly squeaky
clean, and I'm curious how you go
about figuring out what
the next book and if you'd
like to tell us what the next
book is, I'd love that too.
>> Don Winslow: Sure.
Thank you.
Yeah, look, I pick subjects
that I'm passionate about
and that I think are important.
I never wanted to write books
about the Mexican cartels.
I kind of still don't.
But that's what I'm doing next.
I am finishing the
trilogy that began
with a book called
the Power of the Dog.
And then moved on to the cartel.
After both of those
books, I swore and promised
that I wouldn't write another one
and I meant that when I said it.
I was hoping there'd be
nothing left to write about.
Sadly, there is.
Don't get me started.
I tend to go into rants about this.
We're about to build a wall
that will be worst than useless.
So I try to pick subjects
that matter to people.
I try to pick subjects
that are important.
I know that I'm a crime writer.
At the end of the day, I'm an
entertainer, but if at the same time
that I'm writing a good type
exciting book I can bring people
some information or some
insight, I'm happy to do that.
Now I have my own ethical and moral
ideas about some of the things
that these characters do.
What I'm saying is that
when I'm writing it,
I have to set those aside
because I can't be object
if I have to be subjective.
But the book I'm working on now
I'm 300 something pages deep
into it is the final
installment of the cartel trilogy.
Thank you, sir.
>> Thank you.
>> Maureen Corrigan:
Don, I don't know.
You've got another line here too.
So --
>> Don Winslow: Okay, yeah.
>> Good morning.
Thank you for attending.
>> Don Winslow: Thank you.
>> Not necessarily in your
current book, The Force,
but it in any previous
writing I often wonder
about this with writers of crime.
Did you ever get in a situation
where you were a bit fearful
of adding something to a book?
That it may have personal
repercussions on you?
>> Don Winslow: No.
I've never been fearful of that.
There are some things that I've
withheld from books, believe it
or not, either because they
were so horribly violent.
I couldn't deal with
them and/or I thought
that the reader just
wouldn't accept them as true.
One of the problems with writing
about drug cartels is it's
such a surreal world that
some of the things happen
that actually happened are
nevertheless beyond belief.
But I've never withheld anything
out of fear of my own safety.
Look, I'm not a crusading
journalist.
I'm a fiction crime writer.
No one cares enough to --
>> Thank you.
>> Don Winslow: Thank you.
Let me do this, and we'll flip flop.
Hi.
>> Good morning.
>> Don Winslow: Good morning.
>> I was wondering how people
continue to do police work
into their 40's and 50's.
When I was in my 20's and 30's, I
didn't believe I was under any kind
of risk at all, but I look back
once I got into my 40's and 50's,
I wouldn't do that kind of work .
How do they -- how do police
continue to do the work they do?
>> Don Winslow: Well, you
bring up a very good point.
I think it's a young person's
job, and there's a reason
that people's assignments
change as they get older and go
up the ranks or they pull the pin.
When I was out on the street
with plain clothes guys
and women, those are young people.
The great fun of chasing
someone down a subway tunnel.
It's one of the great
bonuses of this job you get
to do, weird, fun things.
It was a thrill, but
an adrenalin rush.
But I was tired.
So I think that the job with a
capital J sort of works that factor
into it, and you see men
and women get more desk jobs
and more sort of investigative jobs.
At the same time, I mean, if
you're a homicide investigator,
for instance, [inaudible] robbery,
I think that experience,
of course, is key.
You want those older people,
been around the pool a few times.
You want some gray
hair in that room.
You make fewer mistakes.
Even on the streets sometimes I
think it's good to have those people
because they have more of a tendency
to talk down a situation and more
of an ability to talk that
situation down as opposed to sort
of the higher testosterone young
guy who just got out of the military
and is now on the streets.
Thank you, sir.
>> Maureen Corrigan: We just
got a five minute warning.
>> Don Winslow: Okay.
>> Maureen Corrigan:
A couple minutes ago.
So --
>> Don Winslow: Cool.
Should we go back here
and then over here?
Is that fair?
Yes. Hi, I can't see a thing.
>> Hi. This book was tremendous.
I've never read any
of your books before,
and I have a long reading
list ahead of me right now.
>> Don Winslow: Well, thank you.
>> I have a question about the
character, Nasty, the informant.
I found him fascinating, and I was
wondering your inspiration behind
that character, if that was
based on a composite of people.
>> Don Winslow: Yeah.
All my characters are not
necessarily based on any person,
but they're sort of
inspired by composites.
Look again, I went out with cops.
I work with cops a lot.
You get to know informants.
When I was a P.I., I had informants.
I had sources.
I was such a low level P.I.
at one point I would
take my informants
to Kentucky Fried Chicken.
And if they had really good
information, they got extra crispy.
That's how down and
dirty my work was
at a certain phase in Time Square.
So I've known those folks.
I have empathy for them.
One thing that's in the book --
and a lot of them are addicts.
One thing that's in the
book that's again true,
is that a lot of cops carry around
small amounts of heroin with them
in order to give to informants
if they're really hurting.
>> I don't want to give anything
away, but just how he evolved
from your first impression of him to
the end, that was just fascinating.
>> Don Winslow: Well,
thank you very much.
I don't want to give it away either.
Thank you.
Yes, sir.
>> So first of all, thank
you so much for this book.
It's easily my favorite of the year.
>> Don Winslow: Thank you.
>> It's a very New York book
which I think is distinct
from just a book set in New York,
and you did that really well
with Irish Mafia Sessions and
The Power of the Dog as well.
Do you see yourself
returning to that later on?
>> Don Winslow: Yeah.
I think that -- well, I know
that large parts of my next book
about drugs will deal
sadly and [inaudible]
with the so-called heroin epidemic.
And Staten Island which has
become known as Heroin Island.
So large sections of that book will
be returning to New York as well
as Mexico and California and
here in Washington, D.C.,
long chapters of the book
because this book will --
because of what's happening
will be more political and more
about policy battles as it will
about undercover operations
and things like that.
>> Thank you.
>> Don Winslow: Thank you.
Yes, and then we'll come back --
even though I'm from San Diego,
I am going to acknowledge the person
in the L.A. Dodgers cap grudgingly.
Yes, ma'am.
>> Hi. I'm curious
about your background.
>> Don Winslow: Yeah, me too.
>> Sounds like [inaudible] --
it sounds like as a writer you
had some fantastic experiences
to feed into your fiction.
So I'm curious how one
goes from getting a degree
in African Studies to being a P.I.
in Time Square no less?
>> Don Winslow: The long way, ma'am.
Look, I don't want to
be ironic about it.
I just needed to make money.
I had to pay rent and --
and so I tried to do things
that were interesting
and a little different,
and when those opportunities
came up, I did that.
The way I got to be a P.I.
was I managed movie theaters in
New York City so you learn all
about theft because all they
are are glittering walls
to disguise various levels of theft.
And so later I was hired to uproot
that theft in other theaters
and then I stayed with the agency.
African History, again, your
career options are tiny,
and I might have gone
in the state department,
but that would have meant benefits
and a career and prestige and all
that kind of thing and instead I
could go and be absolutely broke
and be a safari bum and
live from moment to moment.
So of course I made that choice.
Thank you.
Yes, Dodgers fan.
>> Hi.
>> Don Winslow: Make it quick.
>> Really enjoying the book.
Great job.
How did you come to write this
narrative strictly from the point
of view of Danny Malone
because I've read two
of your previous books
also tremendous,
and they had different
points of view.
This is all from Malone.
>> Don Winslow: Yeah, thank you.
That's, again, a very
astute question.
It's the only book
I've done that with.
There's a technical phrase
for it that I'm not aware of.
So I'm going to mention it in the
third person close or something.
Anyway, I've never went to writing
school so I don't know these things,
but the decision -- I wrote scenes
from other character's points
of view, and they didn't work.
And then I realize that what I
wanted to do, what I really needed
to do was put the reader -- the book
starts in a locked room with Malone.
You already know he's been busted.
And keep the reader just tight
with him through the entire ride.
That seemed to create a certain
kind of intensity and emotion
because when I did write scenes
from other points of view,
which would have been a lot
easier by the way from Claudette
and Russeau and some of
these other characters,
it seemed to let the
tension out of the book.
It just drained it in ways that
I didn't want and slowed it down.
And so I made that
decision albeit reluctantly
to stay just with Malone.
I've never done it before, and I
don't know if I'll do it again.
Thank you for that question.
>> Maureen Corrigan:
Thank you so much, Don.
>> Don Winslow: Thank you so much.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.
