On Don Winslow’s Hyper-Charged New Novel SAVAGES

I read many books annually, so that means I don’t reread all that much. But for Don Winslow’s SAVAGES, I couldn’t help but make an exception. The book was, at least for me, the literary equivalent of narcotic stimulants* which I wanted to indulge in several times over. So I know I spent much of the year to date urging people to read it, feeling pleased when others loved the book and engaging in debate with those who weren’t so wowed.

How, then, to elucidate what’s essentially a visceral HFS** reaction in 800 words? The answer, or at least an attempt at an answer, ran over the weekend in the print edition of the Los Angeles Times. Here’s how the piece opens:

I’m of two minds about whether “Savages,” Don Winslow’s marvelous,

adrenaline-juiced roller coaster of a novel, is a rookie reader’s best

introduction to his work. There’s a delicious sense of satisfaction in

seeing how Winslow has chiseled his increasingly lean prose to

diamond-like precision over the course of 12 novels and fused the themes

of “The Power of the Dog” (2005), his epic account of the country’s

never-ending war on drugs, with the razzmatazz syntax of his

surf-detective novel “The Dawn Patrol” (2008) to produce something heady

and new. “Savages” is both a departure and a culmination, pyrotechnic

braggadocio and deep meditation on contemporary American culture.

All
those reasons, however, justify foisting "Savages" into the hands of
Winslow unfamiliars. The rationale — mine, anyway — is that if newcomers
are sucked in by the fierce narrative velocity and perpetual peppering
of aphorism upon biting aphorism, each will realize what Winslow fans
have long known and will reach for the writer's back catalog.

_*which, by the way, I don’t indulge in, unless coffee counts as a narcotic.
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_**I think you can guess the particular profanity-laced acronym in question.
_