‘Mexican reporters have been murdered telling the drug tale. They are heroes...’
ITWOULD be easy for Don Winslow to keep quiet.as the bestselling author of 20 books, with multiple film and TV adaptations to his name, the 66-year-old has carved a lucrative role as one of the world’s best-known crime writers.
But the title of his new collection of six extraordinary novellas, Broken, appears to reflect his view of an increasingly fractured world.
Despite a ferocious work-rate, Winslow is a constant presence on social media, publicising everything from police brutality to the absurdities of Donald Trump.
And with US pandemic fatalities passing 150,000, he has become increasingly angry, branding the President “directly responsible” for tens of thousands of American deaths because of his failure to act and for initially branding the virus a hoax.
Does he ever regret taking a stance on social issues?
“I don’t know that regret is the word,” he says. “Given the topics I tend to write about, it’s almost incumbent on me when I do have an audience to speak out.any political involvement I’ve had really begins with that. Otherwise I’m afraid I might just be a voyeur and this sounds immodest, but I do have some expertise having spent 22 years on that beat.”
The beat in question is the trafficking of drugs, addiction and violence into America – and the billions of US dollars that have flowed into Mexico while barely denting the activities of the narco barons.
His 22-year journey became the highly-acclaimed Cartel trilogy – he jokingly calls it his “magnum dopus” – about America’s so-called “war on drugs”. The nail-biting trilogy began with The Power Of The Dog in 2005.A decade later Winslow published The Cartel, then last year, the concluding book in the saga,the Border.
The series spans the 1970s to the present day, telling the story of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Art Keller and his increasingly personal battle against Mexican drug lords, corrupt politicians and dirty police. During the writing,winslow became, as he puts it, “accidentally” political. In 2015, he took out a full-page advert in the Washington Post newspaper branding the billion-dollar war on drugs unwinnable. Then, three years ago, in a similar ad in the New York Times newspaper, he branded Trump “woefully ignorant” on drugs and crime.
“After The Power Of The Dog, I swore I’d never go back to that world,” he says. “My agent used to call and say, ‘What do you think about writing another book on this topic?’ and I’d hang up.
“Then I wrote The Cartel during the most sadistic period – you saw this rise of violence and people putting videos of it on the internet.after Cartel, I promised my wife I was done.”
He pauses, adding: “But as they say, ‘When man plans, God laughs’. I feel my job is to bring the reader into a world he or she couldn’t otherwise – I try and see the story through the character’s eyes. Fiction allows me to do that.
“I think novelists have a certain kind of freedom.we can invent the interior lives of characters and bring a reader to a closer experience than journalism can often do. I can invent dialogue; I don’t have to wait for someone to say it.”
But he adds, “I don’t want to in any way compare myself to Mexican journalists, more than 200 of whom have been murdered telling this story. Those men and women are the real heroes.”
Winslow believes certain truths reflect the global drugs trade. “Anyone who buys an illegal drug, especially cocaine, needs to take responsibility for what happens in the production and distribution of that drug,” he says bluntly. “You are, whether you like it or not, or admit it or not, giving money to violent sociopaths who murder, rape and enslave people. So when you’re doing that ‘harmless’ snort of blow, you have to realise it has the blood of innocents all over it.”
The only solution, says