In Savages, Don Winslow introduced Ben and Chon, twenty-something best friends who risk everything to save the girl they both love, O. Among the most celebrated thrillers in recent memory—and now a major motion picture directed by Academy Award–winning filmmaker Oliver Stone—Savages was picked as a best book of the year by Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly, Janet Maslin in The New York Times, and Sarah Weinman in the Los Angeles Times.
Now, in this high-octane prequel, Winslow reaches back in time to tell the story of how Ben, Chon, and O became the people they are. Spanning from 1960s Southern California to the recent past, The Kings of Cool is a breathtakingly original saga of family in all its forms—fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, friends and lovers. As the trio at the center of the book does battle with a cabal of drug dealers and crooked cops, they come to learn that their future is inextricably linked with their parents’ history. A series of breakneck twists and turns puts the two generations on a collision course, culminating in a stunning showdown that will force Ben, Chon, and O to choose between their real families and their loyalty to one another.
Fast-paced, provocative, and wickedly funny, The Kings of Cool is a spellbinding love story for our times from a master novelist at the height of his powers. It is filled with Winslow’s trademark talents—complex characters, sharp dialogue,blistering social commentary—that have earned him an obsessive following. The result is a book that will echo in your mind and heart long after you’ve turned the last page.
About Don Winslow
Don Winslow is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels. He lives in Southern California.
Editorial Review
The year 2005 finds Ben Leonard and his buddy Chon doing what they do best: helping Orange County get high on Ben’s custom-bred hydroponic grass. So successful is their business, in fact, that Duane Crowe, of The Association, pays Ben a visit gently suggesting that they either submit a monthly charge to the established network of importers or take their business elsewhere. Chon is not the person to take this challenge lying down, and soon he’s struck preemptively at a couple of Association minnows he unwisely leaves alive—a decision that acts like the starting gun at a marathon. Quick as a sentence fragment, Winslow is piling on the violence, the flashbacks to an earlier generation of Southern California surfers and hippies, and the one-word paragraphs, as he makes a strong bid for the James Ellroy Award for Self-Indulgent Prose. Since fans know that Ben and Chon and their childhood friend O-for-Ophelia will still be around to peddle primo product in Savages, The Association’s threats don’t carry the menace they would outside the wonderful world of prequels, and readers are free to enjoy the proceedings as deliriously overgalvanized, intermittently hilarious ritual. The walk-ons who pop up just long enough to get caught in the crossfire are too interchangeable for tears, and not even Chon’s deployment to Afghanistan and his encounter with a bomb are cause for alarm. – Kirkus Reviews
Sexy Drug Dealers Have Parents, Too - ‘The Kings of Cool’ by Don Winslow
The New York Times Book Review – June 17, 2012 (Excerpt)
It was not possible to finish Don Winslow’s lean, mean, piercingly funny 2010 “Savages” without wanting more. But there was a problem. By the time Mr. Winslow finished his tale about three dope-dealing Laguna Beach hipsters — two guys and a girl: Ben, Chon and O — they were floating out to sea on God’s great cosmic surfboard. None of them was available for an encore.
Now they’re back with a vengeance. Next month they will show up in Oliver Stone’s film version of “Savages,” and the question of whether a movie can sustain Mr. Winslow’s heavenly understatement without drowning in the violence of drug warfare will have an answer. Even though Mr. Winslow keeps most of the mayhem implicit, his book does involve brutal abductions and a high body count. It’s not named “Savages” for nothing.
And back on the page, where Ben, Chon and O exist most comfortably, Mr. Winslow has written a prequel called “The Kings of Cool.” He set “Savages” at the time just after President Obama was elected. (“Ben likes the new Potus because the cat smoked weed, snorted crack, wrote about it and got away with it,” that book said.) But “The Kings of Cool” starts out in 2005, when the three-way friendship was only beginning to heat up and their ingenious business plan was just being born. The Bush administration gets its share of swipes, since Mr. Winslow is an equal-opportunity White House critic. [Read the full article...]
In Sleazy Era, Writer Found His Subjects
The New York Times – June 24, 2012 (Excerpt)
Don Winslow, whose book “The Kings of Cool” just came out, is a rarity among writers of crime fiction: He doesn’t just make it up. For years he was a private investigator, and he used to read writers like Chandler, Hammett and Elmore Leonard while sitting in his car on stakeouts. Eventually he worked his way up to high-profile arson cases in California (the background for his 1999 novel “California Fire and Life”), but he got his start in Times Square in the late ’70s, when, he likes to say, “the whole place was a glittering river of theft.”
The other morning Mr. Winslow — who now divides his time between Solana Beach, Calif., and a ranch near the old mining town of Julian — took a walking tour of his old turf, marveling at how much it has changed. No prostitutes, no porn palaces, no crack vials underfoot. “They used to crunch under your shoes like clamshells,” he recalled.
An especially startling development was a nearly block-long sign at 49th and Broadway advertising “Savages,” the new Oliver Stone movie (for which Mr. Winslow helped write the screenplay) based on his 2010 novel of the same name. But except for the 42nd Street megaplexes, he pointed out, there were no Times Square movie theaters anymore, and they were where he used to ply his trade. He was hired by the owners to keep an eye on the help. [Read the full article...]
‘Savages’ Return In ‘The Kings Of Cool’
NPR Book Review – July 22, 2012 (Excerpt)
Oliver Stone’s latest film, Savages, opened in theaters earlier this month. The movie centers on two young marijuana growers, Ben and Chon, who live and deal in California, alongside their girlfriend O — short for Ophelia. They find themselves thrust into a world of violence and murder when a Mexican drug cartel comes after their business. The film is based on the book by crime writer Don Winslow, who also co-wrote the screenplay.
Although Winslow had written 12 novels before Savages, that book launched his career. It made it to the top of The New York Times best-sellers list and garnered high praise from literary critics. His new book, The Kings of Cool, a prequel to Savages, is set in 2005, when Ben, Chon and O are just starting their business.
“They run into a wall,” Winslow tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz, “and it turns out the wall is their own past.” [Read the full article...]
THE LONDONDERRY AIR
Testament of an Ulster Gunman A Novel by Garrad Gawler
It all changed for Charles Cunningham, a Physics teacher at the local College of Technology in the County Derry town of Maddenstown, on a June afternoon in 1973 when a bomb exploded in his neighborhood. He answers an advertisement by the UDR, the Ulster Defence Regiment, but, in the time to come, he will experience the consequences of his decisions, and how his involvement complicates matters with family and friends, Protestants and Catholics alike, to an unexpected degree.
With “The Londonderry Air – Testament of an Ulster Gunman” Garrad Gawler describes in minute detail and with an astonishing level of authenticity not only the inner workings of the Ulster Defence Regiment, but also the activities of underground paramilitary groups of regular citizens who planned and carried out the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists in their neighborhood.
We are the only country that makes guns, including military-style assault weapons, available to anyone who wants to buy them. This is not freedom. It is a tyranny of death and destruction — a tyranny of which the National Rifle Association is proud. The Washington Post
The Kings of Cool: A Prequel to the Drug-War Epic ‘Savages’ by Don Winslow
In Savages, Don Winslow introduced Ben and Chon, twenty-something best friends who risk everything to save the girl they both love, O. Among the most celebrated thrillers in recent memory—and now a major motion picture directed by Academy Award–winning filmmaker Oliver Stone—Savages was picked as a best book of the year by Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly, Janet Maslin in The New York Times, and Sarah Weinman in the Los Angeles Times.
Now, in this high-octane prequel, Winslow reaches back in time to tell the story of how Ben, Chon, and O became the people they are. Spanning from 1960s Southern California to the recent past, The Kings of Cool is a breathtakingly original saga of family in all its forms—fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, friends and lovers. As the trio at the center of the book does battle with a cabal of drug dealers and crooked cops, they come to learn that their future is inextricably linked with their parents’ history. A series of breakneck twists and turns puts the two generations on a collision course, culminating in a stunning showdown that will force Ben, Chon, and O to choose between their real families and their loyalty to one another.
Fast-paced, provocative, and wickedly funny, The Kings of Cool is a spellbinding love story for our times from a master novelist at the height of his powers. It is filled with Winslow’s trademark talents—complex characters, sharp dialogue,blistering social commentary—that have earned him an obsessive following. The result is a book that will echo in your mind and heart long after you’ve turned the last page.
About Don Winslow
Don Winslow is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels. He lives in Southern California.
Editorial Review
The year 2005 finds Ben Leonard and his buddy Chon doing what they do best: helping Orange County get high on Ben’s custom-bred hydroponic grass. So successful is their business, in fact, that Duane Crowe, of The Association, pays Ben a visit gently suggesting that they either submit a monthly charge to the established network of importers or take their business elsewhere. Chon is not the person to take this challenge lying down, and soon he’s struck preemptively at a couple of Association minnows he unwisely leaves alive—a decision that acts like the starting gun at a marathon. Quick as a sentence fragment, Winslow is piling on the violence, the flashbacks to an earlier generation of Southern California surfers and hippies, and the one-word paragraphs, as he makes a strong bid for the James Ellroy Award for Self-Indulgent Prose. Since fans know that Ben and Chon and their childhood friend O-for-Ophelia will still be around to peddle primo product in Savages, The Association’s threats don’t carry the menace they would outside the wonderful world of prequels, and readers are free to enjoy the proceedings as deliriously overgalvanized, intermittently hilarious ritual. The walk-ons who pop up just long enough to get caught in the crossfire are too interchangeable for tears, and not even Chon’s deployment to Afghanistan and his encounter with a bomb are cause for alarm. – Kirkus Reviews
Sexy Drug Dealers Have Parents, Too - ‘The Kings of Cool’ by Don Winslow
The New York Times Book Review – June 17, 2012 (Excerpt)
It was not possible to finish Don Winslow’s lean, mean, piercingly funny 2010 “Savages” without wanting more. But there was a problem. By the time Mr. Winslow finished his tale about three dope-dealing Laguna Beach hipsters — two guys and a girl: Ben, Chon and O — they were floating out to sea on God’s great cosmic surfboard. None of them was available for an encore.
Now they’re back with a vengeance. Next month they will show up in Oliver Stone’s film version of “Savages,” and the question of whether a movie can sustain Mr. Winslow’s heavenly understatement without drowning in the violence of drug warfare will have an answer. Even though Mr. Winslow keeps most of the mayhem implicit, his book does involve brutal abductions and a high body count. It’s not named “Savages” for nothing.
And back on the page, where Ben, Chon and O exist most comfortably, Mr. Winslow has written a prequel called “The Kings of Cool.” He set “Savages” at the time just after President Obama was elected. (“Ben likes the new Potus because the cat smoked weed, snorted crack, wrote about it and got away with it,” that book said.) But “The Kings of Cool” starts out in 2005, when the three-way friendship was only beginning to heat up and their ingenious business plan was just being born. The Bush administration gets its share of swipes, since Mr. Winslow is an equal-opportunity White House critic. [Read the full article...]
In Sleazy Era, Writer Found His Subjects
The New York Times – June 24, 2012 (Excerpt)
Don Winslow, whose book “The Kings of Cool” just came out, is a rarity among writers of crime fiction: He doesn’t just make it up. For years he was a private investigator, and he used to read writers like Chandler, Hammett and Elmore Leonard while sitting in his car on stakeouts. Eventually he worked his way up to high-profile arson cases in California (the background for his 1999 novel “California Fire and Life”), but he got his start in Times Square in the late ’70s, when, he likes to say, “the whole place was a glittering river of theft.”
The other morning Mr. Winslow — who now divides his time between Solana Beach, Calif., and a ranch near the old mining town of Julian — took a walking tour of his old turf, marveling at how much it has changed. No prostitutes, no porn palaces, no crack vials underfoot. “They used to crunch under your shoes like clamshells,” he recalled.
An especially startling development was a nearly block-long sign at 49th and Broadway advertising “Savages,” the new Oliver Stone movie (for which Mr. Winslow helped write the screenplay) based on his 2010 novel of the same name. But except for the 42nd Street megaplexes, he pointed out, there were no Times Square movie theaters anymore, and they were where he used to ply his trade. He was hired by the owners to keep an eye on the help. [Read the full article...]
‘Savages’ Return In ‘The Kings Of Cool’
NPR Book Review – July 22, 2012 (Excerpt)
Oliver Stone’s latest film, Savages, opened in theaters earlier this month. The movie centers on two young marijuana growers, Ben and Chon, who live and deal in California, alongside their girlfriend O — short for Ophelia. They find themselves thrust into a world of violence and murder when a Mexican drug cartel comes after their business. The film is based on the book by crime writer Don Winslow, who also co-wrote the screenplay.
Although Winslow had written 12 novels before Savages, that book launched his career. It made it to the top of The New York Times best-sellers list and garnered high praise from literary critics. His new book, The Kings of Cool, a prequel to Savages, is set in 2005, when Ben, Chon and O are just starting their business.
“They run into a wall,” Winslow tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz, “and it turns out the wall is their own past.” [Read the full article...]