Don Winslow

Listen to "Don Winslow Releases The Book Broken" on Spreaker. In six intense, haunting short novels, Don Winslow returns to the themes that are the hallmarks of his acclaimed body of work—crime, corruption, vengeance, justice, loss, betrayal, guilt, and redemption—to explore the savagery and nobility that drive and define the human condition. “Broken”: In the volume’s title story, police dispatcher Eva McNabb takes the call of a police officer’s brutal murder by a vicious drug gang. It’s her own kid, Danny. Then Eva makes her own call. Summoning her elder son, Jimmy, also a cop, Eva commands: Avenge your brother. I want you to kill them all. “Crime 101”: A string of high-level jewel heists up and down the Pacific Coast Highway has gone unsolved for years, mostly because the perpetrator has lived by a strict code he calls ‘Crime 101.’ Police attribute the thefts to the Colombian cartels. But Detective Lou Lubesnick’s gut says it’s the work of just one man. Now the lone wolf jewel thief is looking for that fabled final last score and Lou breaks all the rules of Crime 101. “The San Diego Zoo”: Young police officer Chris Shea is called to investigate a runaway chimp – armed with a revolver. Winslow tips his hat to Elmore Leonard in this story of serious detective work leavened with wit and humor as Chris has to solve a mystery, redeem his reputation, and get the girl. “Sunset”: When surfing legend and chronic criminal Terry Maddux jumps bail for a felony possession charge, equally legendary bail bondsman Duke Kasmajian decides that to catch a surfer, you hire a surfer – private investigator Boone Daniels, who has to find his hero before it’s too late. “Paradise”: While on vacation in Hawaii, best friends and hydro-cannabis entrepreneurs Ben, Chon, and O decide to expand their distribution territory from the mainland to the islands, arousing the hostility of a local crime syndicate and turning paradise into a battleground. “The Last Ride”: To former soldier and cowboy-turned Border Patrol agent Cal Strickland, the illegals who try to jump his stretch of the Texas-Mexico border are a nameless, faceless group who need to be sent back to their side of the line. That is until he sees the little girl in a cage. And Cal knows the time has come to make a stand and help her escape. In BROKEN, Winslow creates a world of high-level thieves and low-life crooks, obsessed cops and jaded private detectives, dope dealers and government agents, bounty hunters and fugitives. Diverse and richly drawn, these characters—some familiar, others new—are lost souls driving without headlights on the dark highway of modern America. Set in New Orleans and Hawaii, Southern California and south Texas, each story in this collection is distinctively Winslow, shaped by his trademark blend of insight, humanity, humor, drama, and consummate literary craftsmanship. A powerful, gripping collection of tales that will become classics of crime fiction, BROKEN is Don Winslow at his nerve-shattering, heartbreaking best.