Broken
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4.1 • 18 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Don Winslow’s acclaimed story collection, featuring “Crime 101,” soon to be a major motion picture starring Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Halle Berry, Monica Barbaro, Barry Keoghan, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Nick Nolte.
No matter how you come into this world, you come out broken . . .
Hailed as “one of America’s greatest storytellers” (Stephen King), #1 international bestseller Don Winslow returns with six intense short novels with characters—some familiar, some new— connected by the themes of crime, vengeance, guilt and redemption. It includes
Crime 101: A string of high-level jewel heists up and down the Pacific Coast Highway has gone unsolved for years, mostly because the perpetrator has lived by a strict code he calls “Crime 101.” Police attribute the thefts to the Columbian cartels. But Detective Lou Lubesnick’s gut says it’s the work of just one man. Now the lone-wolf jewel thief is looking for that fabled final last score. And Lou breaks all the rules of Crime 101…Broken: In the volume’s title story, police dispatcher Eva McNabb takes the call on a police officer’s brutal murder by a vicious drug gang. It’s her own kid, Danny. Then Eva makes her own call. Summoning her elder son, Jimmy, also a cop, Evan commands: Avenge your brother. I want you to kill them all.The Last Ride: To former solider and cowboy-turned-Board Patrol agent Cal Strickland, the illegals who try to jump his stretch of the Texas-Mexico border are a nameless, faceless group who need to be sent back to their side of the line. That is until he sees the little girl in the cage. And Cal knows that the time has come to make a stand and help her escape.
With his trademark blend of insight, humanity, humor, action, and the highest level of literary craftsmanship, Winslow delivers a collection of tales that will become classics of crime fiction.
“While Winslow is in widely fluent in many different prose techniques — from the twisty punchline felonies of Elmore Leonard and Robert B. Parker to the rebop riffs of James Ellroy to mega-works of dark literature a la Cormac McCarthy and James Lee Burke — he's not ‘copying’ anyone. He's writing his OWN masterpieces and just happens to do so in the fashion appropriate to the work.” — The Day (CT)
“Will make you laugh and cry, but in the end will explain why The New York Times thinks Winslow is simply ‘the greatest’ . . . He crafts every sentence until it beats to a rhythm of its own. . . . Broken is devastating and brilliant.” — Sydney Morning Herald
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The six crime novellas in this disappointing collection from bestseller Winslow (the Cartel trilogy) lack the superior plotting and forceful prose of the author's best work. The opening of the weak title story suggests that the focus will be on New Orleans 911 dispatcher Eva McNabb, the wife of a tough, abusive ex-cop, and the mother of two current police officers, but it shifts to the two sons. Jimmy McNabb's disruption of a major meth shipment has tragic unintended consequences that set his family on a path toward bloody revenge in a story that prioritizes action over depth of characterization. Other selections offer nothing particularly new. In "Crime 101," a dogged police lieutenant pursues a thief targeting jewelry couriers in California; in "The San Diego Zoo," the one light-hearted entry, a humane cop tries to disarm an escaped chimp that managed to get its hands on a gun without injuring the primate. Readers should be prepared for graphic violence and staccato prose ("Harold's shotgun is at his hip./It blasts the would-be shooter into the wall./The doors close"). Winslow fans will hope for a return to form next time.
