17 Best Don Winslow Books

Spanning three decades, The Power of the Dog follows DEA agent Art Keller, cartel heir Adán Barrera, high class escort Nora Hayden and New York hitman Sean Callan as the United States declares war on drugs and blurs the line between policy, profit and blood.

In mid 1980s Providence, Irish dockworker Danny Ryan is tied to his in laws' criminal crew and a fragile peace with the Italian mob. A reckless insult at a beach party shatters the truce, dragging Danny into a brutal gang war he never wanted.

Art Keller, now at the top of the DEA, confronts splintered cartels, an American heroin and fentanyl epidemic, and a compromised government as his decades long war with Adán Barrera spills from Mexico into Wall Street, migrant camps and a vicious presidential campaign.

Best friends Ben and Chon run an ultra high grade marijuana operation in Laguna Beach and share an unconventional relationship with their friend O. When a Mexican cartel kidnaps her to force a partnership, the pair wage a reckless, inventive war to get her back.

Years after locking cartel boss Adán Barrera in a United States prison, burned out ex DEA agent Art Keller is hiding out as a beekeeper. When Barrera escapes and Mexico erupts into rival cartel wars, Keller is drawn into a decade long, cross continental struggle to stop him.

Boone Daniels, a surf obsessed ex cop turned private investigator in San Diego, takes a routine insurance case looking for a missing witness. The search leads to a brutal child exploitation ring and a tragedy from his past, forcing him to choose between waves and responsibility.

Denny Malone, the charismatic leader of an elite NYPD unit in Manhattan North, has spent years bending rules, skimming drug money and cutting dirty deals. When a federal sting exposes him, he must decide whom to betray to keep his family and himself alive.

Broken gathers six crime novellas: a New Orleans cop family bent on revenge, a cat and mouse jewel heist, a cop chasing an armed chimp, two surf soaked tales, and a border agent trying to reunite a caged child with her mother.

Graduate student and former street kid Neal Carey is pulled out of his quiet life when his secret employers send him to 1970s London to find a senator's runaway, drug addicted daughter hiding in the city's punk underground before scandal explodes.

On the run after the Rhode Island war, Danny Ryan lands in California with his father and young son, trying to turn dirty money into a clean future. Hollywood temptations, a dangerous romance and a high stakes heist pull him back toward violence and exposure.

In this companion to the classic thriller Shibumi, master assassin Nicholai Hel is released from postwar confinement on one condition. He must undertake a near suicidal mission in 1950s Asia to kill a powerful arms dealer, navigating double agents, geishas and shifting loyalties.

When beloved surf legend Kelly Kuhio is murdered, the Pacific Beach community turns on the young punk accused of killing him. Boone Daniels agrees to help the defense, digging into real estate schemes and old grudges even as his own friends call him a traitor.

Set before Savages, The Kings of Cool traces how Ben, Chon and O slid into the marijuana trade, cutting between their laid back present and their parents' tangled history with dealers and dirty cops in 1960s and 1970s Southern California.

Jack Wade, once a star arson investigator and now an insurance claims man, is called to a fatal house fire at a real estate mogul's mansion. The evidence suggests murder, pulling Jack into a web of Russian mobsters, fraud and Southern California corruption.

Small time criminal Tim Kearney escapes a life sentence by impersonating legendary surfer smuggler Bobby Z for a risky DEA prisoner swap. When the deal collapses, Tim flees into the desert with Bobby's lover and young son, hunted by bikers, agents and cartel killers.

Frank Machianno is a retired San Diego hitman who now runs a bait shop, juggles odd jobs and dotes on his daughter. When a supposed favor lures him into a meeting that is really a hit, he must revisit old scores to learn who wants him dead.

Now a casino owner in Las Vegas, Danny Ryan appears to have left his criminal past behind. As old enemies, federal investigators and business rivals converge, he faces a final reckoning over what he did to survive and what kind of man he wants to be.