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| (photo: Robert Gallagher) | |
Don Winslow is a New York Times and international bestselling author of 25 novels, several of which have been adapted for the screen. Winslow has won numerous accolades, including Italy's Raymond Chandler Award and the U.K.'s Ian Fleming Silver Dagger. He resides in California with his wife. His latest, and final, novel is City in Ruins (Morrow, April 2, 2024), the conclusion to his acclaimed Danny Ryan Trilogy (City on Fire; City of Dreams).
City in Ruins is the final installment of the Danny Ryan trilogy. Why end the story here?
I've always conceived of this project as a trilogy, and Danny's life fell into three distinct phases. In the first book, City on Fire, he started as a minor combatant in a losing war but ended up as a leader, mostly by virtue of being the last man left standing.
In the second volume, City of Dreams, his life shifts to becoming a fugitive from that war, wandering the country with what's left of his crew, but more importantly with an infant son and an aging father he needs to care for. The book also centers around a tragic love story, so the novel is mostly about relationships--how does Danny try to relate to loved ones while being a criminal on the run?
The third phase of his life, City in Ruins, is yet more distinct: Danny finally finds a place to set his feet--Las Vegas--and builds an empire, which he then has to protect in a war. He has to protect his family and the people he loves, especially his son, Ian. City in Ruins is largely about fathers and sons--there are four sets of them in the book--and these relationships drive the action. Because he's a father, Danny is always looking to the future. The tragedy is that the past from which he was running catches up with him. To ensure his son's future, Danny has to return to his own past; to make his son everything he can be, Danny has to become what he once was. Danny's life comes completely around, the circle is closed, so that seemed like the right place to end the story.
Danny wants to be a legit businessman but being in Vegas makes it hard for him. Why did he choose Sin City of all places to go straight? Would he do better somewhere else?
Maybe Danny would have been better off in a more--shall we say "mundane"?--locale, but where else could he build an empire? The Danny in City on Fire had no ambitions beyond maybe buying his own house someday. The Danny we meet in City in Ruins is a different guy. Now he wants generational wealth for his family. He sees himself as a leader.
Aeneas founded Rome, and I had to ask myself, what could the modern equivalent be? It took an embarrassingly long time to come up with that answer, and it was so obvious: Las Vegas.
Where else can you build anything you have the money for? You can build Rome (Caesar's Palace), Paris, Venice, Egypt--anything you want. There's a reason I called Danny's big project Il Sogno--build it.
Why did you decide to quote Virgil's Aeneid before some chapters?
The Aeneid is the spine of the entire trilogy. My objective in writing these books was to take the stories, characters, and themes from the Aeneid, the Iliad, the Odyssey, [and] certain Greek dramas and mythology to tell a fully modern crime story. This isn't as odd as it might sound, because when I read these classic works, I was struck not only by their similarities to my beloved crime fiction genre, but also by the parallels with actual American criminal history. I felt I'd already heard these stories because I'd grown up with them. Mob wars were in the daily newspapers; local gangsters were not only topics of (furtive) conversations, but were actually around in restaurants, bars, even on the beaches. And it's simply impossible to look at contemporary crime fiction and not see its debt to the great themes of the classics.
Danny is a modern-day Aeneas. His life story follows that epic hero from his participation in the losing side of the Trojan War--told in the Iliad--to his wanderings and finally to his empire building--the founding of Rome--in the latter books of the Aeneid. This is also Danny's arc. Aeneas is mostly trying to find a home; so is Danny. Aeneas is trying to protect the people he loves; so is Danny. Aeneas benefits from the actions of his powerful mother, the goddess Aphrodite. Danny does as well, although his relationship with his mother, Madeleine, is difficult. Aeneas builds an empire; so does Danny. Aeneas fights a bloody war to protect it; likewise Danny. There are differences as well--Aeneas was famously devout; Danny is a lapsed Catholic. Most of all, Aeneas is a classic epic hero, while Danny--I hope, anyway--is a fully modern man.
There's a subplot focusing on the character of Chris Palumbo, who seems to have enough going on that he could front his own series of books. Did you ever consider spinning him off into one?
No, I never did, although he plays a larger role in City in Ruins than I'd probably intended. I guess I just started to enjoy Chris's humor and his outlook on life. At the same time, I never wanted to forget he was a mobster capable of cold-blooded violence.
In terms of the trilogy's classical underpinnings, Chris fills the role of Odysseus, and I was intrigued by the later chapters of that epic, in which Odysseus spends seven years entranced by the sorceress Calypso. Also when his son launches out on a journey of his own to find his father, but especially when Odysseus returns home to reclaim his place and deal with the suitors who were besieging his wife, Penelope. All of that was a great and fun challenge to set in the experience of a contemporary mafia guy, who, like Danny, is on the run. I came up with the idea of a Nebraska farm woman who keeps Chris in her bed, and of mob guys who are running Chris's wife into bankruptcy. It took a while to figure those modern equivalencies out, which is one reason this trilogy took me almost three decades to complete.
You have several projects in development for the screen but have announced this is your last novel. Please share how and why you reached this decision. And what are the chances you'll change your mind down the road?
Thanks to great representation in the form of Shane Salerno and The Story Factory, I am very fortunate to have several projects headed for the screen. The pilot to a television series, The Border, based on my three novels about the Mexican drug cartels, has been filmed. Crime 101, based on a novella in a volume titled Broken, is slated to be a film starring Chris Hemsworth and Pedro Pascal. My novel The Winter of Frankie Machine is being produced by the creator of The Bear, Chris Storer. And this [Danny Ryan] trilogy is scheduled to become three films, with Elvis star Austin Butler playing Danny.
Regarding retirement, one thing I've learned over about 70 years now is to never say never. Having said that, the decision to retire feels final to me. You can't choose the era in which you live, and I strongly feel we are living in a time in which our democracy is under existential threat from the former president, his white-wing cronies, and white supremacists. I think what time and energies I have left are better dedicated to that fight than to writing fiction. I don't want to write the elegy on American democracy.
And, listen, I've had such a wonderful career, much bigger and better than I ever dreamed of or probably deserve. I have been so blessed in getting to tell the stories I've wanted to tell, and been wonderfully compensated for having done it.
I have no regrets, only gratitude. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis