ARTS BOOK REVIEW the June 19 publication of “The Force” — 20th Century Fox gave him a sevenfigure deal for the film rights, a film Ridley Scott will produce and may direct. Fox and Scott already have “The Cartel” in pre-production. Winslow builds up friction by showing how Malone crossed the line incrementally over the years: shaking down criminals, accepting favors, taking cuts, administering vigilante justice on his own and as favors, and acting as became a high-priced street drug. Meanwhile, the Mexican go-between for criminal defense attorneys and venal ADAs. What put him in the Sinaloa Cartel made an executive decision to undercut U.S. incinerator, though, was the biggest heroin bust in the city’s history, which would pharmaceutical companies by increasing production, thus have been twice as large had he and his partners not taken half the cash and prodlowering prices, of an easier-made form of heroin more uct; this and the fact that Malone executed the drug kingpin as a vendetta for his potent than opioids. gang’s murdering a snitch’s wife and kids. Addicted white Americans, finding this black-tar heroin Malone is painfully aware he is corrupt. He is wracked with guilt over leaving cheaper and stronger than Lortab, Norco, Vicodin, Oxycontin his wife and three kids in Staten Island, while feeling like how he’s the worst and the like, began shooting up, overdosing and, many times, thing in the world for his beautiful black girlfriend, given her addiction to heroin. dying. “Malone literally saw it happening. He and his team And yet, he simply cannot stop; it’s not just his greed but his arrogance: “You busted more bridge-and-tunnel junkies, suburban housewives need the money, the cash flow,” he tells himself, “but it’s more than that, admit and upper Eastside madonnas than they could count.” it. You love the game. The thrill, the taking off the bad guys, even the danger, the Winslow provides a closer look at the dark culture of idea that you might get caught.” To cope with the stress of the job and his internal the NYPD, such as the hatred and respect cops have for top moral turmoil, Malone partakes of dexedrine, booze, hash and veneries. criminal defense attorneys, the practice of “testilying” for the The feds have him and his only way out is informing on those higher up in the “greater good,” how jails function as de facto hospitals and chain. Malone also faces betraying his partners, something he swore he’d never detox centers, and cops’ relationship with reporters: “You do — that is, until the feds told him if he didn’t they would put his wife in jail, trust a reporter like you trust a dog. You got a bone in your take away his house and leave his kids without parents or a home. hand, you’re feeding him, you’re good. Your hand is empty, The pressure on Malone ignites as he finds himself attacked from all sides: his don’t turn your back. You either feed the media or it eats by-the-book captain, internal affairs, federal investigators, the U.S. Attorney, the you.” As for “suits who love their numbers,” Malone calls Harlem gangs, his partners who suspect he might be betraying them, the mob (for them a “new management breed of cops” like “the sabermetwhich he does favors), other cops who think he is a rat, the police commissioner rics baseball people [who] believe the numbers say it all, and and a mayor’s office afraid he knows too much, not to mention Malone’s own when the numbers don’t say what they want them to, they personal demons. massage them like Koreans on Eighth Avenue until they get Ultimately, the novel is an indictment of a bedlam system rife with corruption, a happy ending.” graft and favors for the penthouse set, giving color to the phrase, “the fish always In Malone, Winslow has created a multifaceted antistinks from the head downwards.” hero you will care about as a “father loves a wayward son,” In the lead-up to the oddly satisfying, cinematic denouement, Winslow ratchets and who, toward the denouement, you might find yourself up the racial tension as Malone faces a defining choice that could touch off “the fire pulling for as the noble savage in a system permeated by this time”: whether he is still a real cop who will act as protector of the residents corruption and duplicity. This sweeping Shakespearean of Manhattan North, or a former cop who chooses to avoid penance for his crimes tragedy of character and moral order tracks the downward because he’s made a deal with the powers that be to help hide a high crime. spiral of a talented and decorated police detective who goes Winslow takes the reader into a concrete world of gangs and guns, the darkbad “step by step.” It’s a tale played out down the dark alleys ness of NYPD culture and a racially combustible city set to ignite. Told to the of Manhattan North among warring clans ruled by corrupt rhythmic beat of the NYC cop vernacular, this epic boils with vicious battles, kings, fighting over turf, fortunes and modern-day artillery, blood-soaked hands holding dying cops and double-crosses by rat bastards to as all of New York City is torqued into a racial tinderbox brew up an atmosphere in which, as in Macbeth’s Scotland, “foul is fair and fair while awaiting a grand jury’s ruling on a white cop killing an is foul.” unarmed black kid. In short, “The Force” is an instant classic. If you’ve not heard of Don Winslow, you will soon. He writes highly suspenseful and realistic crime fiction, his “The Force” novels so timely they are nearly prescient. Winslow is the Don WInslow best-selling author of “The Cartel,” a 2015 epic about narco William Morrow, 2017 warfare in Mexico. Last September — nine months prior to
Winslow’s ‘The Force’ an instant crime classic BY W. PERRY HALL/CONTRIBUTING WRITER
H
e who “fights monsters,” Nietzsche warned, “should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.” As Don Winslow’s novel “The Force” opens, NYPD Detective Sergeant Denny Malone is being held in a federal lockup, accused of being a “dirty cop,” one who gazed so long into the abyss that it now gazes back into him. Malone is the de facto leader of NYPD’s most elite crime-fighting unit, the Manhattan North Special Task Force, whose mission is to rid Washington Heights and the more gentrified Harlem of drugs and guns. Dubbed “king of Manhattan North,” Malone wears the crown proudly. Somewhere on the path from his beginning as a young beat cop from Staten Island — son of a hero Irish cop — Malone lost perspective, became greedy and self-serving, and forgot what it means to be a guardian of his community. The novel brings readers up to Malone’s current incarceration via flashbacks into his career, routine, snitches, the brotherhood of partners and his moral fall from grace. Though one might complain that the background is overlong, I found it fascinating. Winslow spent years researching the NYPD culture and interviewing street cops, veteran detectives and high-ranking police bureaucrats for this novel, which he has suffused with tales he gathered from the home and street lives of New York’s finest. He dedicates the book to law enforcement employees murdered in the line of duty over the time he was writing “The Force” — and the list covers nearly three pages. Winslow describes the “love-hate relationship” between cops and the community: “The cops feel for the vic’s and hate the perps, but they can’t feel too much or they can’t do their jobs and they can’t hate too much or they’ll become the perps. So they develop a shell, a we-hate-everybody attitude forcefield around themselves that everyone can feel from ten feet away. You gotta have it, Malone knows, or this job kills you, physically or psychologically or both.” Malone developed an interesting take on The New York Times’ declaration of a heroin epidemic: “It’s only an epidemic, of course, because now white people are dying.” He goes on to explain how whites started getting hooked on opioids prescribed by their physicians, who stopped prescribing for fear of this very addiction. So white folks went to the open market and opioids
Arts vs. crafts showdown at MMoA
Eclectic month for MAC
The Mobile Arts Council (318 Dauphin St.) has a trio of exhibitions to welcome the last complete month of summer, running the gamut from young ideas to new art forms to new ideas with old crafts. In the Danielle Juzan Gallery, the James T.
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Strickland Youth Center projects “Brush Up” and “Speak Up” will be featured. One program — a product of initiatives from Judge Edmond Naman, Riley Brenes and Devin Ford among other community leaders and the subject of this week’s Lagniappe cover story — opted to let Strickland youth complete public art to beautify blighted structures. The kids also tackled another project wherein they “bared their souls for film.” The graffiti art and fashion-inspired exhibit “An Infamous Tag” will occupy the Small Room. The work is the product of designers Jordan Atchison, Tony Davis and Justin Tulle.
The Skinny Gallery will feature Under the Sea from the Azalea City Quilters Guild. The group made nontraditional patterns, then employed innovative techniques such as ice-dying before utilizing unique materials in tailoring their singular designs of aquatic worlds. There will be an opening reception from 6-9 p.m. during the Sept. 8 LoDa Artwalk. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Entrance is free. For more information, call 251-432-9796 or go to mobilearts.org. Compiled by Kevin Lee.
ARTSGALLERY
What starts as practical creativity often moves into something beyond function. Whether it’s a quilt from Gee’s Bend, pottery by Charles Smith or furniture from Noguchi, Saarinen and Eames, at what point does craft become art? What defines fine art from other forms, and where is the role of utility? Is there a higher aim in decoration? On Thursday, Aug. 3, at 6 p.m. a panel of local artists and academics will discuss these
criteria and whether boundaries exist at all in a special program at the Mobile Museum of Art (4850 Museum Drive). Entrance is free. For more information, call Elizabet Elliott at 251-208-5200 or go to mobilemuseumofart.com.