After saying his career as a professional writer was over, South Kingstown’s Don Winslow has returned with The Final Score, a book featuring six crime novellas. He spoke with Ocean State Media’s Luis Hernandez about his latest volume, which is out Tuesday.
Interview highlights
On why he wrote The Final Score
Don Winslow: I had these stories that were just running around in my head. Sometimes characters yap at you and talk to you. I know how crazy that sounds, but I finally gave in and sat down and wrote them. A publisher seemed to want to publish them. So here we are. Some of these stories I’ve had in my head 10 years or more. Others were fairly new.
On what to expect from The Final Score
Winslow: It’s similar to a volume I did – a short story collection called Broken – that came out during COVID. I think I viewed this as, sort of, a musical album in some ways that I have some general overarching themes, I think, that carry through all six of these pieces. But each one has a different style and a different subject. That was really fun for me. I love writing novels, of course, but (with) a novel, you’re staying in the same style. You’re staying with the same general story. This really allowed me to play and to stretch and to do a variety of things.
On why he stopped writing to focus on political activism
Winslow: Well, I mean, let’s look at what’s been happening in the last year. I think that answers the question why it was important. The importance of our democracy and our society is much more important than Don Winslow banging out another crime story.
Listen, I know what my job is and my primary job as a crime writer is to entertain, to give you great stories with great characters. I strive to do that. At the same time, I write fairly realistic crime fiction. The subject matters have been immigration, prison policy, the opioid crisis and addiction. So when you write, or particularly when you research books with those topics, it forces you into the political (arena) because you’re writing about, hopefully, the real lives of people. Again, you’re trying to bring the reader into the real lives of those people.
I think I became political, too, because I felt that otherwise I was just a voyeur. One day it occurred to me – I think it was around the time of my second book about narco trafficking – that I was making money off narcotics trafficking. And then I thought, “Well, what’s the difference between you and the guy slinging dope on the corner?”
I spent my own money and took out a full page ad in the Washington Post to advocate for an end to the war on drugs. And I’ve done similar things since, and then got more and more political on social media because I think otherwise, again, what’s to distinguish me from anybody else in the cartels?
