Member Review

Don Winslow’s unretirement work, The Final Score, is a collection of six novellas, all rooted in crime. Having earned his place among the finest authors of crime fiction, Winslow now sets out to prove that his short-story craft is equally accomplished. A grand heist by a legendary robber before his final bow; a teenager delivering liquor on dry days and learning life lessons; a pair of wise guys swapping stories; a cop turning to the mob to help his cousin; a surfer PI guarding a volatile, drug-addled actress under a death threat; and the total transformation of a man triggered by a moment of madness – the settings differ, but the desperations, fears, and motivations driving the characters remain the same.

Winslow’s prose, sharp in his longer works, is even keener here, with each of these compact stories packing the punch of full-length tales. The shorter length does not hinder character development, nor does it limit the intricacy of the plots. The moral complexity at the heart of these stories lends them both power and weight. While Final Score and Collision unfold with screenplay-like plotting, True Story is told entirely through dialogue between two men. Both The Sunday List – set in Providence, Rhode Island, the setting of Winslow’s magnum opus, City on Fire – and The Lunch Break strive to showcase the goodness hidden beneath layers of ugliness. The North Wing, along with a couple of others, explores how far one will go for family. Winslow’s dark humour runs throughout the collection, most notably in True Story, while the inventive invectives of The Lunch Break are hugely amusing. The endings of a few stories do seem somewhat rushed and a bit too neat, but that does not take away the fun they deliver.

While I would not call this the greatest crime fiction ever written, it is certainly among the best. The reasons behind Winslow’s retirement and subsequent unretirement lie beyond my understanding, though I hope they are not merely aimed at boosting sales, for his craft alone is more than sufficient. I enjoyed this little anthology immensely and look forward to what Winslow comes up with next.

I am immensely grateful to HarperCollins UK for the digital review copy of The Final Score through NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.