THE BEAUTY OF BREVITY: DON WINSLOW'S THE FINAL SCORE

Many authors apply aspects of poetry to their prose for lyricism. Don Winslow often does it for economy. His sharp word choice and ability to create expressive tight sentences that convey things other writers need a paragraph for allow him to quickly move through time and story and still convey both the information and emotion of that time passed. It's no wonder he gravitated to novellas and a form of "long short story". In his second collection, The Final Score, he pushes himself further with as few words as possible.

Half of the stories deal with characters facing prison. The title story that kicks it off with veteran crook John Highland out to rob the mob skim off an indian casino with a crew. The fact that he knows he's going away for a lifelong stretch for another job and wants the money to set his wife up, gives a poignant element to this diamond slick heist yarn. "North Wing" carries echoes of Bruce Springsteen's "Highway Patrolman", dealing with a straight arrow cop who wrestles with putting his morals and future on the line to make sure his weak cousin doesn't go into prison's gen. pop after he kills a woman in a drunk driving accident. Winslow creates an emotionally harrowing story that ends with poetic irony. The last and longest story "Collision" follows an upright upper middle class family man whose bad choice and bad luck lead to a manslaughter stretch that transforms him and his family to survive the time inside and the legacy of it outside. It hits the right emotional beats, creating both a human drama and thriller as well as a meditation on what freedom is.

Nick McKenna, an eighties teen striving to get out of his seaside Rhode Island town to go to college serves as the protagonist of "The Sunday List". As a way of getting a chunk of the tuition he works as a delivery boy for the liquor store when it was illegal to sell booze on Sunday. The piece reminded me of the first chapter of The Winter of Frankie Machine in Winslow's ability to engage us with a character by simply following him through the routine of his day and having us wonder when it it will go off track.

"Lunch Hour" provides the comfort food of the collection. He returns to his surher P.I. Boone Daniels tossing some of the spotlight on his lifeguard buddy Dave the Love God when he helps Boone with a job of keeping drugs and alcohol away from a troublesome starlet during a film shoot, They are the only two who take her beliefs in a stalker seriously. The author demonstrates a warm familiarity and love for his surfer bra' characters.

He works at his most experimental in "True Story", the funniest story. With a tip the hat to George V. Higgins, it is told all through the dialogue of one wiseguy telling a story about one of their own to another with a lot of tangents, We wonder is this goon's tale is going anywhere. but it is so entertaining, with the two figuring out which Vinny or Tony thier talking about, that it would work if it didn't.

Like many writers, Don Winslow uses the short fiction to experiment and push himself in less familiar areas. He tries genres new to hm and plays with forms and styles he hasn't before and pulls it all off while still giving us full characters, emotions, and stories. I hope this is evidence of him coming back from his declared retirement instead of an anomaly. The Final Score shows he has a lot of talent we haven't seen yet.

-review by Scott Montgomery