Don Winslow, whose work includes a dozen of the finest crime novels written in the last 20 years, displays all of his strengths, including propulsive narration, compelling characters, and a tight, staccato writing style, in Broken, a collection of six remarkable novellas.
The length of his novels has been swelling in recent years, his latest, The Force, exceeding 700 pages; so these tales, each about 50 pages long, are a departure for him. They vary in tone, but each, in its own way, conveys the sense that the people and/or American institutions he portrays are broken.
One yarn, “The San Diego Zoo,” does it with a touch of humor, its first sentence, “No one knows how the chimp got the revolver,” making it virtually impossible not to read on. Another, “The Last Ride,” does it with a dose of righteous anger as a Trump supporter, horrified by the sight of a little girl in a cage, sets out to reunite her with her mother in defiance of his Border Patrol superiors.
For the full text of my review for the Associated Press, please click here.
Bruce DeSilva's Rogue Island 