Crime writer Don Winslow is fresh out of retirement with renewed conviction

It had been a while since Don Winslow picked up the pen. 

The prolific crime writer, known for the Cartel Trilogy (“The Power of the Dog”), announced in 2022 that he was retiring from writing to turn to political advocacy. Winslow told USA TODAY in 2024 that he was content to “let it go, and focus on the activism.” In the run-up to the 2024 election, he made biting videos targeting Donald Trump and his allies. He became a political pundit to an X following of nearly 1 million. All the while, he didn’t write. 

His activism didn’t have a “particularly positive result,” he says, and in the days since, he has turned back to writing as a comfort. Old habits die hard. Characters were bubbling beneath his subconscious, begging to be put to paper. Stories about surfers, career robbers and a teenager with an illicit side gig became “The Final Score” (out now from William Morrow), Winslow’s latest six-story crime collection. 

He has maintained his online activism, even at a cost. He canceled his public book tour events for "The Final Score" because of “serious and credible threats on his life,” his reps confirmed to USA TODAY: “We have dealt with threats before, but never like this.”

“I was threatened if I released another anti-Trump video,” he posted recently. “I will be releasing our biggest video this week.”

In a call with USA TODAY before his book release, Winslow maintained his ambition for both activism and writing amid a climate he calls “madness.” 

“My basic philosophy about this is this administration’s movement has taken a lot from us. What I refuse to let them take is my passion for living and doing what I want to do,” Winslow says.

Don Winslow returns to writing with glowing praise from Stephen King

Winslow is chatting from the beach near his Southern California home, watching the surfers take to the waves. From here, he can see 60 miles of coastline. It's a setting and culture he often includes in his work. He splits his year between here and Rhode Island, road-tripping with his wife back and forth each time. His tiny New England home state also often appears in his fiction.

Toward the beginning of our call, a passerby stops to tell him she’s a fan of his books.

“Aren't you nice – did you like 'em?” he says to her, the reader’s praise a muffled sound over Winslow’s gratitude. “Thank you very much.”

The fan is in good company. “The Final Score” features a glowing blurb from Stephen King, who calls the collection “the best crime fiction I’ve read in twenty years.”

“I was gobsmacked,” Winslow says. “That was so generous and surprising. And listen, he’s a great guy. He’s one of nature’s noblemen, so for a lot of reasons, I was really pleased."

It’s as good an affirmation as any to keep writing. But Winslow maintains that he doesn’t know where the road will wind for him next. Right now, while he says the country is “a horror show,” he’s content to stay the course.

“Some of these conservatives infamously say, ‘Well, we’re going to make liberals cry.’ Well, I haven’t cried and I’m not going to,” Winslow says. “They’re not going to take from me my passion for doing the things that I love to do, and one of those is writing.”

Winslow’s books span the crime circuit, from drug empires to gangs to arson to hit men. His own interests and expertise are riddled across the page, including his surfing and the decades he spent as an investigator. As any Winslow reader will tell you, the man is a meticulous researcher. For Winslow, location is as important as character; in fact, it’s often looming as large as a character itself. From revisiting his childhood suburban New England neighborhood to today's California backroads, “there’s no setting in this book that’s not intimately familiar to me,” Winslow says.

Thematically, the stories drastically shift. The eponymous short story, “The Final Score,” follows a robber embarking on one last heist before he’s sent to live the rest of his days in prison. Flip the page to “The Sunday List” and you’re in the slow-grinding seasonal economy of small-town Rhode Island, following a 17-year-old on his alcohol delivery routes to thirsty customers. In “Collision,” a white-collar hospitality manager must sacrifice his morals to get through a prison stint. One rash decision changes the course of his life.

But if there’s a throughline, it’s this: “We are often faced with impossible decisions,” Winslow says. “I think we’re in an era nationally, culturally, where we’re trying to decide who we are and what our proper place is in the world in the face of very, very difficult opposition.”

What’s next for Don Winslow?

His first public year out of retirement is shaping up to be a big one. “Collision,” the final short story in his collection, has already been slated for adaptation starring Jake Gyllenhaal. An adaptation of Winslow’s novella “Crime 101” hits theaters Feb. 13 and stars Chris Hemsworth, Halle Berry, Barry Keoghan and Mark Ruffalo. 

“It’s really good, which is high praise from the novelist,” Winslow says. “They did a wonderful job on both the script and the film.”

He’s reading Nigerian author and MacArthur Fellow Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (he studied African history in college and loves African literature). He’s taking up some projects just for fun. One, he tells me, is cataloging the female models in French impressionist paintings. Why? One day he was looking at a painting and realized: “This woman has a life that is beyond what's on that two-dimensional thing.” He says he has a lot of ideas he wants to turn into nonfiction books, but he’s not sure he’ll ever do anything with this one. For what it’s worth, I tell him, I think it would make an interesting read. 

“What happens now, I’m not trying to be coy – I really don’t know. I haven’t decided,” Winslow says. “I think I’ll always write. Whether I’ll publish or not, it’s an open question.” 

Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at [email protected].