DON WINSLOW

The best-selling US author returns with the first in a crime saga trilogy about Irish and Italian crime syndicates in the ’80s and ’90s

Why do you think we love to be terrified by thrillers?

I think the answer is inherent in the question – we love to be thrilled. Why do we go on roller-coasters, or surf, or ski? Or watch scary movies? The risk releases certain endorphins that produce pleasure. I think thrillers are sort of the intellectual version of that. Plus, we just love the fantasy of going beyond the law.

Is there a particular inspiration behind your new crime trilogy?

It’s two-fold. Primarily, it’s the place and time I grew up in – New England during a time of mob wars. I wanted to come home, in a literary sense. Also, in reading the Greek and Roman classics, I saw all these parallels to real-life crime stories. I wanted to see if I could write a novel that would stand alone as contemporary crime fiction while echoing those themes.

Is there a book that made you love writing?

So many. If I have to choose, I’d say Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye.

What’s the best book you’ve read?

It’s a bit of a cliche, but I’m going to say War And Peace. It has vast scope and real human intimacy in the same book.

What book do you re-read?

The Complete Works of Shakespeare, among many others. I love to read books again and again.

A book that had a pivotal impact on your life?

Something of Value by Robert Ruark. It made me want to go to Africa.

A book you couldn’t finish? Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner.

A book you wish you had read but haven’t got to?

Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust.

The book you are most proud to have written?

Tough one. But if you put a gun to my head, I’ll say The Cartel. It was so damn hard to write, and I think it made an impact.

What books are on your bedside table?

Right now? Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and Noel Mostert’s Frontiers.

What are you writing next?

Finishing up the trilogy, of which City On Fire is the first.

City on Fire by Don Winslow, Harpercollins, $33