The Italian mafia was there from the turn of the century and was fairly powerful until, say, the mid-80s. Maybe we should start there.ĭon Winslow: Providence has a big crime history. In the weeks before the novel’s release, I had a chance to talk with him about his New England roots, organized crime in the northeast, and clam chowder the way God intended.ĭwyer Murphy: I suspect most people outside New England don’t know a lot about Providence and its place in the greater organized crime structures of America. City on Fire is the start of a new trilogy inspired by Greek classics, and Winslow speaks of the project with an infectious energy. And a woman emerges, too: Winslow’s Helen of Troy, in a two-piece. In City on Fire, we’re dropped into coastal Rhode Island in the days leading up to Pasco Ferri’s clambake, an end-of-summer ritual that ordinarily unites the Italians and Irish, who’ve been enjoying decades of peaceful crime when a new generation – with new ambitions, new drugs, new lusts – emerges. Now you can add the more classical variation to that list, as Winslow brings out a new novel charting the clashes of New England organized crime in the 1980s and beyond, while mirroring the movements of Greek epic poetry, most immediately The Iliad.
Take that word, epic, however you like, and it pretty much applies, whether you’re talking about his sweeping indictment of the War on Drugs ( The Power of the Dog, The Cartel, The Border, among others), his look at corruption and abuse inside the NYPD ( The Force), or the old surf noirs ( The Dawn Patrol, The Gentleman’s Hour). Over the last ten years or so there’s been a growing recognition that Don Winslow is after something epic with his crime fiction.