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‘The Force,’ A Conversation with Don Winslow

June 20, 2017 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Known to millions of fans, Don Winslow is an author of crime and suspense novels, including a series of five novels featuring private investigator Neal Carey as the protagonist. His highly acclaimed standalone novels include Savages, The Winter of Frankie Machine, The Death and Life of Bobby Z, The Power of the Dog, and The Cartel.

The Force, his latest novel, features Detective Denny Malone, a NYPD sergeant who’s head of Manhattan North’s task force for narcotics, dubbed “Da Force.” For 18 years, Malone has done whatever it takes to serve and protect a city of glitz, glamour, depravity and corruption; a city where no one is clean—including Denny Malone himself.

Very few people know that Denny Malone and his partners have stolen millions of dollars in drugs and cash in the wake of the biggest heroin bust in the city’s history. But now Malone is snared in a trap of competing forces, and must thread his way through conflicts that may involve betraying his brothers and partners, the Job, his family, and the woman he loves.

“The Force” is a mesmerizing novel: part police procedural, and crime novel; and part, epic tale. It’s a searing and soul-searching depiction of a tortured NYPD detective.  You said, ‘This is the book I’ve wanted to write my whole life.’ Tell us about that.

I was born on Staten Island where Denny Malone lives. I was raised in Rhode Island but as a kid I was always running down to New York. I lived and worked there in the late seventies and early eighties. New York has always been a home to me.

But it’s more than that: the movie The French Connection is one of the reasons I’m a writer. I remember distinctly going into the theater on Broadway and seeing that film. I was just blown away by it, and by Serpico followed by Prince of the City. Those were important and evocative works for me, both the books and the films. Having lived and worked in New York and having been so influenced by those movies, I always had an ambition to try writing this book.

In “The Force,” Denny Malone is a conflicted man: he uses drugs, is separated from his wife, feels guilty about his kids, and lives on the edge. Many of your protagonists can be described as ‘messed up’: Frankie ‘Machine,’ Ben and Chon from “Savages,” and Tim Kearney aka Bobby Z. How do you manage to dig so deeply and depict such flawed and troubled people?

Those kinds of people are more interesting. The edge is always more interesting than the center. I recall Michael Connelly and I were at some conference and he was talking about writing. He took a cup and put it on the center of the table. ‘It’s not very interesting now,’ he said, and kept moving it toward the edge to the point where it was about to fall over and shatter. And then he said, ‘Well, now I have your attention. Now, it’s interesting.’

He was dead right about that. He was talking more about action than about character, but I’ve always taken that concept and applied it to character. I think one of the great advantages we have in our genre of crime fiction is we write about people in extremis. We write about people in extraordinary situations. And, we write about flawed people. Before this, I wrote more about criminals than cops, but it’s the same principle. The flaws in these people make them interesting and compelling. At the end of the day, the flaws make us love or hate them.

You and I have been married a long time. You know that you get into a relationship because of someone’s virtues, but after a while you begin to love their flaws. I often feel that way about my characters. I come to love them in spite of and because of their shortcomings. I often think our greatest strengths are also our greatest weaknesses.

That’s true of Denny Malone: the same things that drive him to do great things, also drive him to do bad things.

You have an extraordinary backstory. You’ve been a movie theater manager, a private investigator, led photographic safaris in Africa, hiking expeditions in China, and directed Shakespeare productions in Oxford, England. How have these experiences informed your writing?

I think—and you know this, too—everything we do informs our writing. That’s what makes us writers. Everyday observations and experiences become grist for the mill. More specifically, I grew up on Shakespeare. I was reading and memorizing Shakespeare when I was eight years old. Having the chance to work with great people in England, working with language every day as a director, I had to make the language understandable and physical. I had to bring out the muscularity of the language. It definitely helped inform my writing. My involvement with the theater company was mostly before my first novel was published. I was still struggling to make a living. From seven in the morning until ten at night, I was either rehearsing Shakespeare, teaching it, or talking with other directors. I was constantly immersed in language—with its rhythm, sound and with dialogue, all of which was a tremendous foundation for my writing.

The investigative work was not terribly different from what I do now, in the sense that I looked at lots of trial transcripts, read records, and interviewed people. I developed a capacity to search out certain details, looking for things that didn’t quite match-up. I looked for discrepancies between documents and testimony. That background informs my writing. For example, while writing The Cartel and Power of the Dog, I went through thousands of pages of records. Those were skills I learned as an investigator.

As a photographic safari guide in Kenya, my job was to notice details. For instance, when trying to find a leopard for people to photograph, I had to keep in mind there would be a certain kind of tree at one time of day, and another place at a different hour. In other words, I was always looking at details. I become a trained observer and would look at underlying reasons for things being the way they are.

In crime writing, there are the events, but then there are the underlying reasons for what has happened. Providing that richness is what I hope to give the reader.

As do “The Power of the Dog” and “The Cartel,” “The Force” explores, among other things, the drug trade, politics, police, and corruption. What has drawn you so intensely to these issues?

I never started out to write about the drug world and these issues.

I live near the Mexican border, and back in the late nineties, a massacre occurred just across the border. I wanted to understand why it had happened. I found myself sitting at the keyboard and writing about it.

Living on the Mexican border, I eat more tortillas than bread [Laughter] so it’s very real for me. In the course of researching and writing about it, I’ve met people who keep it vivid for me. It’s one thing to talk about the heroin epidemic, it’s another to go to the funerals.

As a writer, you want to write about the most interesting and important things happening today. I want to write about race relations, about police shootings, corruption and drugs. In life, you can’t separate things from each other; they’re all interconnected parts of a larger piece.

Did growing up in Rhode Island also influence you?

Rhode Island had a large Mafia presence, more so when I was growing up than it does now. It was always around, and I saw it. It was always written about in the Providence Journal, and Jimmy Breslin was a big influence on me. I recall being in high school and reading Breslin’s columns and thinking that’s what I want to do. In college, I was a journalism major. I wrote columns basically imitating Breslin’s style [Laughter].

Is there anything about your writing process that might surprise our readers?

I don’t know if it’s a surprise, but I treat writing like a job. I don’t really believe in inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs.

You know the old saying, don’t you? ‘If you wait for inspiration, you’re a waiter, not a writer. [Laugher]. You can wait on tables at Le Cirque or at a diner, but you’re still a waiter.’ [More laughter]

Let me tell you a cute story about Le Cirque.

Years ago, while working as an investigator, I stayed at the hotel where Le Cirque was located. But I wasn’t going to eat at that restaurant, not at those prices. So, I ordered in some Chinese food. When I got my hotel bill, there was a forty-seven-dollar surcharge for them having let the delivery guy come up to my room with the food. So, the next time I stayed there, I ordered the food and asked the delivery guy to meet me in the hotel lobby. I ate the take-out in the lobby, right outside the entrance leading to Le Cirque. I stood there with a brown paper bag and ate the Chinese food. They told me it looked seedy and asked me not to do it. So, I negotiated with them and they dropped the surcharge.

But getting back to the writing: to me, it’s a deliberate process. It’s not based on inspiration. The other thing that might surprise our readers is I don’t start writing a book until I know the main characters well. I’ll think about them—sometimes, for years, like in the case of Denny Malone.

How did writing “Savages,” the novel, differ from teaming up with Shane Salerno and writing the screenplay for the movie?

They’re two different breeds of cats. One is static, the other is kinetic. One has plenty of time for the story to unfold, the other is on a clock. In a movie, you have to make a scene do five or six things simultaneously. That can be difficult for a novelist.

I understand that “The Force” has been sold to Fox with James Mangold directing, and Ridley Scott is directing “The Cartel,” which is going to be a film. How have these events impacted your career?

For me, it’s been huge. To have directors of that stature is fantastic, and that sunlight reflects on me. The major effect is I now have the economic freedom to write all the time. That’s been true since The Death and Life of Bobby Z was made into a film. I was six published books into my career before I could quit my day job. I always made a living. I wasn’t going to penalize my family for my ambition, but as for how I approach my day? It’s always been the same: Get up and show up.

“The Force” reminds me of “Savages,” which I still view as one of the most audacious pieces of contemporary fiction I’ve read. Both books are written in an edgy, lyrical, cinematic, even radical style. Will you talk about your writing style?

As in architecture, form follows function. I think story dictates style. I try to write from inside the character’s head. It’s kind of sneaky: it’s third person but it has a first-person point of view. Does that make any sense?

Yes, it does. And it’s written in the present tense, which gives everything a sense of immediacy.

Yes, when I began writing in the present tense, the story suddenly had a sense of immediacy it never before had. It was not like I was looking down at a table and describing what was there. So, I’ve stayed with writing my novels in the present tense. That way of writing lets me inhabit a character. It dictates the style, the rhythm and the choice of words. This may sound pretentious, but I try to pay attention to the musicality of the writing.

It doesn’t sound pretentious at all. There is a music to the words.

Yes, there is. I go back to Shakespeare with that concept.  You have to stage it, you have to put it on, you have to hear it. Sometimes when I was writing some of the chapters in The Force, I would listen to the hip-hop music referred to in the chapter, and pump it up to the point where it was painful. I’d write while the energy and edge and anger of the music was pounding in my head. In other scenes, I’d listen to the jazz referred to in that chapter I was writing.

I think readers love being there in the midst of the action. That’s particularly true in the crime genre. There’s a powerful link between film and novels, especially in noir fiction.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers today?

I’d simply say: Write. Like most things in life, it’s a verb before it’s a noun.

The second thing I’d urge is: Don’t write anything unless you have to. I would say you shouldn’t write unless you feel an inner compulsion to do so. And then, don’t listen to most people.

The third bit of advice is simple: just read. Read good books. I just finished War and Peace for the fifth time in my life. I wanted to see how a great writer handles a multi-generational story. So, one has to read good things.

Another pointer: Don’t pay attention to so-called peer-reviews. It’s too easy to get nibbled to death by ducks. [Laughter].

I’d say one other thing: there’s a difference between a writer and an author. An author is published. I would say to any writer, if you sit down and write something and finish it and wrestle with it, you’re a writer. And don’t let anybody ever tell you you’re not a writer. And you’ll have my respect as a writer. Welcome to the brotherhood and sisterhood.

Other than writing about crime, what do writers like Michael Connelly, Lee Child, John Sandford, David Morrell, Laura Lippman, Reed Farrel Coleman, Patricia Cornwell, and so many others have in common?

I think these writers and so many others like them share something important: a great sense of humanity. I think they know people and love to explore what humanity really means in terms of language, story, and in terms of place.

Will you compete this sentence: “Writing novels has taught me___________?”

Tenacity. It’s taught me tenacity [More laughter]. It’s a marathon. It’s like I’m at mile twenty-two and think, I’ll never make it. And you feel the same way the next time, but now you have the experience and can tell yourself you got through it last time and you’ll get through it again. And it will come out pretty well.

What’s coming next from Don Winslow?

I’ll probably write another book. [Laughter].

Congratulations on writing “The Force,” a brilliant novel, rich in language, conflict, setting, and character. It resonates deeply with realism, honesty, and sheer magnetism. Fans of “The Godfather,” “Mystic River,” “The Wire,” and “The Departed” will absolutely love this book.

 

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Filed Under: About Books, Huffington Post Column, Interviews Tagged With: Cartels, corruption, drugs, police, tragedy

Madness and Death

December 6, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

madnessOn October 18, 2016, Deborah Danner, a 66-year old woman, was shot to death by a police sergeant. Along with his fellow officers, he had responded to 911 calls from neighbors because she had been acting strangely. Records show the police had been called in the past to deal with Ms. Danner who had been tormented by schizophrenia since her twenties.

When the officers arrived on the scene, they encountered an agitated Ms. Danner brandishing a pair of scissors. When told to drop the scissors, she grabbed a baseball bat and charged toward the sergeant, who shot her twice. Although the officers had Tasers, lethal force was used against this sick woman.

Despite a recent but underfunded citywide effort to expand mental health care services, no mental health professional accompanied the officers to defuse the confrontation. The system failed Ms. Danner. It also failed the officers responding to the call.

This tragic case brings into focus a systemic problem in dealing with mentally ill people. Before the advent of antipsychotic medications, someone like Ms. Danner would have been institutionalized for years. But with the advances in prescription medicines, severe signs and symptoms of schizophrenia can be suffocated, obviating the need for long-term hospitalization.

Stabilized patients, armed with a prescription for antipsychotic medication, are now discharged from mental hospitals and sent out into the world where they can presumably lead reasonably normal lives.

But there is a catch—a very big one:

The medications must be taken every day—without fail—in order to be effective.

When patients stop taking their pills, or when life stresses escalate, the symptoms come rip-roaring back and the patient descends back into psychosis.

Floridly disturbed patients, like Deborah Danner, now cycle through psychiatric hospitals for short-term stays until their symptoms subside. Once stabilized, they’re back into the world with instructions to take their medication and follow-up at community mental health centers.

Underfunded out-patient facilities are overwhelmed by the influx of patients, resulting in people being seen only once every few months for only a few minutes per visit. The long interval between appointments and the brevity of each check-up doesn’t allow for proper monitoring, which lead to a “revolving door” cycle of short-term psychiatric hospitalizations, stabilization and release, followed by missed clinic appointments along with non-compliance taking medication, inevitably leading to a resurgence of madness.

When the police are called, as happened with Ms. Danner, they typically face an agitated, irrational, psychotic person who is often threatening and can inflict potentially lethal injury. Even an elderly, diminutive woman in a state of psychosis can pose an enormous risk to first responders.

Every day, in cities and towns throughout our country, police are called to quell disturbances caused by the mentally ill.  Most encounters end uneventfully. But every now and then, a tragedy occurs like the one that befell Deborah Danner.

We ask our police to be mental health professionals without giving them sufficient training to safely diffuse these encounters. We refuse to sufficiently fund out-patient mental health centers, resulting in tragedies, in addition to contributing to the problem of mentally-ill homeless people.

Deborah Danner didn’t deserve to die. The sergeant who killed her shouldn’t have to face the rest of his life dealing with the action he took inside her apartment.

As a society, we must get serious about adequately funding mental health clinics and training our police officers so this kind of tragedy does not happen again.

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Filed Under: crime, doctor, health, Huffington Post Column Tagged With: death, emergency personnel, police, psychosis

‘Debt to Pay,” A Talk with Reed Farrel Coleman

September 13, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Reed Farrel Coleman, a best selling author of 24 previous novels, has penned the popular Moe Prager series as well as other well-received books. He’s a three-time winner of the Shamus Award, and has won the Macavity and Barry Awards, among others.

Robert Parker, considered by many to have been the dean of American crime fiction, was the author of seventy books, including the series featuring Chief Jesse Stone.debt-to-pay

After Parker’s death in  2010, Reed Farrel Coleman was chosen to  keep this immensely popular series alive.

In Debt to Pay we find Chief Jesse Stone romantically involved with former FBI agent Diana Evans. When a Boston crime boss is murdered, Jesse suspects it’s the work of Mr. Peepers, a deranged assassin who has caused trouble for Jesse in the past. Peepers promised revenge against the Mob, Jesse, and one of Jesse’s cops, and against Jesse’s ex-wife Jenn. Peepers toys with the police as to the when and where he’ll strike, and Jesse knows there’s a steep debt to pay and blood will be spilled in the process.

Debt to Pay is the third Jesse Stone novel you’ve written. What was it like to take over a series written by the legendary Robert B. Parker?

It was an interesting challenge because I felt like a psychologist might feel stepping into Sigmund Freud’s shoes. [Laughter] It’s not like I took over some minor writer’s character…I tried not to worry about that reality, and decided not to try to live up to Bob’s legacy. I think writing is difficult enough without throwing more hurdles in front of myself than already exist. I realized how momentous a task it was, but my approach was to simply write the best book I could.reed-farrel-coleman-c-adam-martin

Do you feel you had to adhere to Robert Parker’s voice for Jesse, or were you tempted to take him in a slightly different direction?

When I was offered the opportunity, one of the first people I called was my friend, Tom Schreck. He’s an author, New York State boxing judge, a drug counselor, and a huge Robert B. Parker fan. I wanted his advice about how to go about writing these books. He said something that crystallized my approach to this series.

Tom is an avid Elvis Presley fan. He said, ‘I’ve seen all the best Elvis impersonators, but no matter how good they are, there are two things you can never get past: number one is, you’re aware it’s an imitation, and number two is, the impersonator can never do anything new. He’s trapped in the Elvis persona. His words were like an explosion in my head. I determined not to try imitating Bob, because I could never escape the fact that readers would see it as imitation. And, imitation—no matter how good—is never as good as the original. And, I could never do anything new if I was going to mimic what Bob did. I decided I’d be true to the character—Jesse Stone would act as he had in the past, but the reader would see different aspects of Jesse emerge, and the town of Paradise would evolve. So, in a sense, I use the same camera Bob did, but my focus is different.

In Debt to Pay, Jesse has given up drinking alcohol. What accounts for this turn of events?

He gives it up temporarily. If you think of Jesse Stone, you think of Tom Selleck, who played him on TV … a tall, handsome guy who’s athletic and whom women love.  A reader can have trouble relating to someone like that. Everyday people relate to Jesse because he struggles, as do we all. Personal challenges are what make us human. I think it’s really important to show Jesse having serious problems with alcohol. Sometimes he succeeds, and sometimes he fails.

I’m familiar with your series’ characters: Moe Prager, Gus Murphy, and now, Jesse Stone. How do you go about formulating different characters for various different series?

My own series are easier because the best place to look for new characters is to look in the mirror. Somewhat like method acting for writing, I try coming up with some aspect of a character that I feel within myself—a flaw, an emotion, an incident—something that happens to me, and it becomes the basis for a character. It’s far more challenging to find a way into somebody else’s character. My way into Jesse was his baseball career because I’ve always been an avid baseball fan and consider myself a jock. That was my route into Jesse.

You’ve been called a ‘hard-boiled poet’ and the ‘noir poet laureate’ by various critics. What about your writing has resulted in these characterizations?

Bribery. [Laughter]. I started as a poet when I was thirteen, and it’s evolved into prose, but I’ve never lost my love for the sound of language. I’m not conscious of it while working, but when I re-read my writing, I see a certain lyricism, and know I’ve never lost the love of the sound of words.

If you could read any one novel again as though it’s the first time you’re reading it, which one would it be?

That’s pretty easy for me to answer. It would be The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler. It has its flaws, but it’s the kind of writing I wish I could do. There are others like Slaughterhouse Five that come close, and if I didn’t write crime novels for a living, it would be a different novel.

What, if anything, keeps you awake at night?

The cat and the New York Mets. [Laughter].

I don’t regret things. I don’t look back and rue my decisions. I’m not a big sleeper; I sleep five or six hours at most. So nothing really keeps me up at night.

Looking back at your career, has your writing process changed in any way?

I’m not sure my process has changed, but I’ve changed as a writer. I’ve never stopped being influenced by other writers. My writing has become slightly more refined. For me, the more I write, the better I get at it.  When I no longer feel I’m getting better as a writer, that’s when I’ll stop. For example, I once had an idea for a novel, but I wasn’t yet a good enough writer to tackle it. It took me five years to complete Gun Church because it took me that long to develop the skills needed to write that novel.

What’s coming next from Reed Farrel Coleman?

Another Gus Murphy novel is coming next. It’s called What You Break.

Congratulations on writing Debt to Pay, a beautifully crafted novel that captures Robert B. Parker’s world view, as it tells the tense story of a flawed but intrepid police chief who finds himself pitted against a tenacious “cat-and-mouse” killer.  

Mark Rubinstein’s latest book is Bedlam’s Door: True Tales of Madness and Hope, a psychiatric/medical memoir.  

 

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Filed Under: About Books, book launch, Huffington Post Column Tagged With: cat-and-mouse killer, crime, noir, police

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