Novel of the week

The Force

by Don Winslow

(Morrow, $28)

To call Don Winslow’s epic new novel a great crime thriller would be an understatement, said Jason Sheehan in NPR.org. It’s “an instant classic, an epic, a goddamn Wagnerian opera.” The setting is today’s New York, and the protagonist is a corrupt Irish-American cop who founded an elite task force that fights drug crime in upper Manhattan. But the story of how Denny Malone wields and preserves his power is “as old as feudalism,” and the storytelling is “can’t-put-it-down, can’t-get-thevoices- out-of-your-head fantastic.” Blackmail, theft, and murder all figure into the way these cops do business, but “Malone’s mindset may be the most disturbing element at work,” said Neely Tucker in The Washington Post. He’s convinced that cowboy lawmen like him and his crew are the only people who truly care about Harlem’s poor, most of whom are black. Winslow wants to show us what happens when a white guy like that, working in Harlem, decides he’s the good guy. “The result is riveting and scary—in a lot of ways.” ■