[Winslow] is an excellent crime writer. He writes in the simplest, clearest, most spare way of anybody I've read. He's been honing it for years. * Evening Standard *
Packing more of an emotional heft than Savages, it's written in the leanest prose possible, with a single-word paragraph being nothing unusual but managing to say more than you'd expect. -- Alastair Mabbot * Herald *
Other beach-worthy fiction this season includes The Kings of Cool, the Don Winslow book for anyone overdue in discovering Don Winslow. This author's Savages is the basis for a coming movie. The Kings of Cool is its prequel, studded with the same sharp, lean dialogue and quick-witted calculation. Mr. Winslow's thoughts on America's two wars in Iraq, as filtered through The Godfather, come out like this: 41 as Brando. 43 as Pacino. It takes a mixed process of reading and decoding to appreciate fully Mr. Winslow's hard-boiled, blazing talents. -- Janet Maslin * New York Times *
It was not possible to finish Don Winslow's lean, mean, piercingly funny 2010 Savages without wanting more...Now they're back with a vengeance. Next month they will show up in Oliver Stone's film version of Savages [and] Mr. Winslow has written a prequel called The Kings of Cool...Mr. Winslow's keen attention to drug culture isn't going to keep readers away from him. He's too damn good to be polarizing. His characters are smart about their self-interest. His dialogue is tight, laconic and razor sharp; if Elmore Leonard or Lee Child discovered surfing, they might sound something like this. * New York Times *
A brilliant, hypnotic novel...A considerably more ambitious book than Savages, seeking to map out not only the history of Savages' weird love triangle, but also to cast a panoramic eye over the whole history of the drug trade in California from the 1960s onwards. And Winslow fulfils those ambitions fantastically well, with a stylistic swagger and bucketloads of empathy to go with a scintillating, perfectly executed crime-novel plot...Delivered in the sleekest, most sinewy prose you're ever likely to read. At times, The Kings of Cool verges on a kind of steel-tipped poetry, providing flashes of insight from perfectly carved sentences. It is a simply stunning novel. -- Doug Johnstone * Independent on Sunday *
