The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – City on Fire: A Novel by Don Winslow

Episode Date: April 30, 2022

City on Fire: A Novel by Don Winslow From the #1 internationally bestselling author of the Cartel Trilogy (The Power of the Dog, The Cartel, and The Border), The Force, and Broken comes the first novel in an epic new trilogy. “Superb. City on Fire is exhilarating.” – Stephen King "Epic, ambitious, majestic, City on Fire is The Godfather for our generation.” – Adrian McKinty, New York Times bestselling author of The Chain Two criminal empires together control all of New England. Until a beautiful woman comes between the Irish and the Italians, launching a war that will see them kill each other, destroy an alliance, and set a city on fire. Danny Ryan yearns for a more “legit” life and a place in the sun. But as the bloody conflict stacks body on body and brother turns against brother, Danny has to rise above himself. To save the friends he loves like family and the family he has sworn to protect, he becomes a leader, a ruthless strategist, and a master of a treacherous game in which the winners live and the losers die. From the gritty streets of Providence to the glittering screens of Hollywood to the golden casinos of Las Vegas, two rival crime families ignite a war that will leave only one standing. The winner will forge a dynasty. Exploring the classic themes of loyalty, betrayal, and honor, City on Fire is a contemporary masterpiece in the tradition of The Godfather, Casino, and Goodfellas—a thrilling saga from Don Winslow, “America’s greatest living crime writer” (Jon Land, Providence Journal).

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrissvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we're glad to have you again. Thanks for tuning in, guys. Be sure to go refer your friends, neighbors, relatives to see the show. Subscribe to it at all those wonderful places. You can go to youtube.com for tuning in, guys. Be sure to go refer your friends, neighbors, relatives to see the show. Subscribe to it at all those wonderful places. You can go to YouTube.com, Fortress Chris Voss. You can go to Goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss. See everything we're reading and reviewing over there. Go to all of our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter.

Subscribe to the big LinkedIn newsletter. That thing is killing it over there in our 122,000 LinkedIn group as well. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate,

and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. Or order the book where refined books are sold. Today we have an amazing author on the show. He's pretty prolific and done quite a few things and we're glad to have him on. Plus he's got an amazing Twitter feed too as well. Today we have Don Winslow on the show with us. The title of his newest book that just came out.

In fact, his agent was telling me we want him on the show tomorrow so that we can get everybody out buying the book on the weekend. So that's what everyone needs to do is go buy the book on the weekend or order it up for wherever fine bookstores there are. City on Fire, a novel, is now out April 26, 2022. So it's been out for a few days and you can pick it up and order it today. Dawn is the author of 21 acclaimed award-winning international bestsellers, including the New York Times bestsellers, The Force and The Border, the number one international bestseller, The Cartel, The Power of the Dog,

Savages, and The Winter of Frankie Machine. Savages was made into a feature film by three-time Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone. The Power of the Dog, The Cartel, and The Border sold to FX in major multi-million dollar deal to air as a weekly television series beginning in 2020. A former investigator, anti-terrorist trainer, and trial consultant, Winslow lives in California and Rhode Island.

Welcome to the show, Don. How are you? I'm good, thank you. How are you? Good, good, good, good. Glad to have you on. Give us your dot coms wherever you want people to go find out more about you on the interwebs, please. Yeah, donwinslow.com and donwinslow.twitter.

There you go. So what motivated you to want to write this book and tell us more about it? This book is about a guy named Danny Ryan, who is a fisherman, a longshoreman in my little town where I grew up in, in Rhode Island. He marries the daughter of an Irish mob boss. And for that reason, he gets pulled into a gang war mob with the Italian mafia there. You know, it's the first book I've set at home. First book I've set back in my hometown. And so that's, you know, it makes it very personal. Now, some of this comes back from your history of being in that town, correct? Where you grew up and some of the different mob things that were going on in there? Well, yeah, listen, I hasten to add I was not involved in the mob. Nor was my family.

But, yeah, you know, it was always around there. In those days, the mob was pretty powerful in New England. Not so much anymore. And those guys were always kind of around. You were aware of them. You saw them in the papers. You saw them, you know, on the street every once in a while. You saw them in a restaurant or something. So yeah, this is sort of the realm of memory. And this is the first in a new series or

trilogy that you're doing. Is that correct? Yeah, it's the first of three. We'll follow this guy, Danny, from New England to Hollywood and then to Las Vegas. So yeah, we got some time to spend with him. What made you want to do like a new character in a new series as opposed to some of the stuff you've done before and then also recreate this in your hometown? Yeah, a number of reasons. One, you know, I spent 23 years writing about the Mexican drug cartels, only a third of my life. Then I did a book about the NYPD and I did a short book, a book of short novellas. It felt like it was time. You know, I had this idea 27 years ago, Chris,

when I was reading of all things, the Iliad, Homer's Iliad. And I started to be struck by the parallels between the stories that were being told in classical fiction and modern crime things that had actually happened, but also that were in crime fiction as well. And so I thought, could I meld those two worlds? Could I write a completely contemporary crime novel that you could read just as that? All it is is a crime novel. At the same time, borrowing these characters and these themes and these stories from classical literature. And so I wrote the first sentence, as I said, 27 years ago, and then finally picked it up again. And you're launching a 23-city book tour as well. Is that correct?

Yeah, I think I've been launched. I think I've been maybe city four or five. Oh, there you go. There you go. Well, you are calling from a hotel. Now, do I have this right from HarperCollins that it's also had the screen rights sold already? You have that right. Yeah, you have that right. Snorri bought the screen rights while it was still in manuscript form.

Wow. And intending to make feature films of it. So that's kind of exciting. That's always exciting to see your character. Do you have characters maybe in your head from Hollywood thatwood that would be you know you'd want in the book or i'm sorry the movie yeah yeah maybe in the book you know yeah yeah no i don't i i have to very deliberately make sure i don't do that you know there are only two things that could happen christen and they're both bad? Either I'd end up writing a bad

film treatment or I'd end up writing a bad novel. Those are the two choices. So look, it would be disingenuous for anyone in my generation to say we're not influenced by film, right? I know in writing a book like this that I'm coming in a tradition that includes the Godfather, Casino, Goodfellas, the Sopranos. But I have to acknowledge those iconic works and then forget about them, you know, and just get inside the story, get inside my own characters and write the book. Did the pandemic have an effect on the book at all in you writing it or maybe some of the content you put in it? You know, people have asked me that and I've been saying no, but thinking about it more deeply, you know, I think that a lot of this

book is about friendship. It's about the closeness between people who are extremely loyal to each other. And I think in writing the book, I think because of the pandemic, I became more conscious of the value of those friendships and the value of those relationships and how deep they can really be and what they mean. So whereas previously I've said no, you know, other than in terms of efficiency, right? Because, you know, all three books are done. That's largely due to the pandemic. Well, you know know we were all locked up or locked down or whatever whatever it was i think i maybe wrote them you know sooner but i think maybe that's the biggest influence on this book almost a semi-conscious awareness

of the value of those relationships yeah stephen king wrote very is written very highly about you and reviewing your work in the book. I was trying to find a copy of it here, but I couldn't find it. But you're well-renowned in your excellent writing books. What are some things that you think tease out to readers that maybe they're going to like in this book or maybe a scenario or two that you thought were really interesting that readers can be teased by? Yeah, thanks. I think the first one is actually the opening of the book. You know, you always try to open a book like this with something interesting, you know, something compelling. And in this case, it's a woman walking out of the ocean onto the beach,

but more importantly, a man watching her, my guy, Danny Ryan, who's laying there with his wife, you know, on a beach blanket on a sunny August day. And he sees this, this strange woman, new woman come up from the water. And he has this feeling that everything has changed. Suddenly everything's changed. Nothing's going to be the same. And he has this almost foreboding about what this is going to mean. You know, in other sequences, you know, what happens is that because of this woman there is a rift a split between the italian guys and the irish guys that goes violent into a gang war that lasts you know and cost a lot of lives and i think that you know the the argument over the woman is the pretext the reality is it's always as it always is in mob wars it's about money power and turf you know

somebody wants something that somebody else has and i set this book in the 80s because it's a time of decline for organized crime and when it starts going into its steep steep decline because of the rico acts and other things and so what you have and a kind a metaphor is you have rats who are fighting over a smaller and smaller hunk of cheese counterintuitively that makes the fight all the more vicious when you're fighting over less and less yeah the so is it hard to you know i mean like like you mentioned before there's so many great crime dramas out there, Goodfellas, Casino, The Godfather. Was it a challenge to try and write in this space or make something seem fresher or newer? How did you approach it?

Yeah, it was a challenge, you know, but that's the fun of it, isn't it? You know, you don't start to write a book like this unless you think I can do something fresh with it. I can do something different. You know, for one thing, I knew that I was going to be writing a saga. I knew I was going to be writing three books and I knew where they were going to take me. And I knew they were going to take me in a different territory than those, those great works that by the way, I admire and I watch and read all the time. Right. I was watching Sopranos on an airplane the other day, you know? And so I knew that. And secondly, I think it's the it's the relationship to these classical themes. You know, every think that readers can read it without any knowledge of

that at all or interest in it. But if they do have an interest in it, I think that it's sort of a value added kind of element. Yeah, we really have a romanticism of gangsters. And I just went and watched the new 4K theater release of The Godfather, which I could watch, you know, 50,000. And what's your opinion on why we love the gangster genre so much? I thought a lot about it. No? We could be here all day, right? Yeah. Why do we, why especially guys, right?

If The Godfather's on and you're flipping around the channels and The Godfather's on, you are going to watch a few minutes of it, aren't you? Right? You know, there's certain scenes you just want to see. Yeah, look, I think it's a power fantasy. Yeah. You know, that in our own world, in our sort of law-abiding mundane worlds that most of us live in, yeah, if we have a problem,

we have to go through legal solutions. And they're usually tricky and they're messy. But, you know, wouldn't it be nice to go to Marlon Brando and he's got the cat on his lap and he lives in this make it thus world, right? And so you got a parking ticket. Cool. It's fixed. You have a noisy neighbor. They shut up. They turn the volume down, right?

Or in a more serious case, you know, a serious sort of injustice that you feel has been done to you. Instead of being in that lengthy criminal justice system or civil justice system, you just go to a guy, right? Or maybe on a fantasy level, you are that guy. And you take that kind of revenge. Most of us, of course, happily won't do that. But in these books and in those movies, that's exactly what happens. And so I think that there's a certain kind of fantasy, a wish fulfillment about that that makes it very attractive. Do you think there's kind of a masculine thing to it? Like, as men hearkening back to a time where men were a little bit more manly, I mean, maybe had a little bit more testosterone according to studies that are out there.

Oh, is that right? Didn't know that. I mean, made my morning, Chris. Thank you very much. Testosterone's been falling off, I guess. It's like now what it used to be 50 years ago or something. I don't know. Oh, Lord.

Okay. I don't know. I'm a little rattled right now to answer your question. Yeah, listen, it's a definitely masculine thing. In this book, you know, that functions very heavily because what touches off this war is one guy steals another guy's woman. Now, she goes quite willingly to this other guy, but guy number one feels that his masculinity has been insulted. He can't deal with that in any rational way and ends up killing someone over it.

And so you very much see that, I think, what we call now toxic masculinity at play. It is a twisted sense, I think, of what it means to be a man. So I think, yeah, watching these sometimes, you know, everybody maybe, every guy wants to perhaps be Michael coming out of the men's room of that restaurant. You know, you want to be Tony Soprano doing this, that, or the other thing.

Yeah. The great allure of The Godfather was, you know, I think, I think Francis Ford Coppola said it best. It was a story of a paternal father and his three sons. It was a king and his three sons fighting for the king. And one was cunning. The other was, I think, a fool. And then the other one was just outrageous or excitable.

I can't think of the other one. So I think literally a retelling, literally a retelling of Shakespeare's Henry IV. Wow. With the moral poles reversed. You have a king who's facing a rebellion. He has a son who is kind of just a playboy running around. That's where the moral poles are reversed because Pacino is a kind of a just a playboy running around that's where the moral poles are reversed because pacino is a war hero the son comes back to support the father in the rebellion

you know does in the film and then he becomes something very different than what he was he becomes a very cold calculated killer you know and and it it kills his soul as we see in godfather too and kills the other brother so i think quite literally you know you've it kills his soul, as we see in Godfather 2, and kills the other brothers. So I think quite literally, you know, you've got this story about a family with a king. But I think, you know, at the end of the day, sort of all great American stories are either about the road or the family or both.

That's true. You really nailed it on the head there. That really is true. There's a paternal thing to it. Even in the mob, there's a paternal hierarchy. You know, in your protection, you know, whether it's, I mean, there's protection, there's extortion, but also you're protecting your family and people work for you. But absolutely. But look how that image changed from the godfather as you get into the Sopranos.

Yeah. If you talk about the lowered masculinity the sopranos is literally a feminine voice yeah i always thought it was kind of funny with the whole like seriously there's a godfather who's in psychotherapy yeah yeah didn't they try and whack one of the original guys who was in psychotherapy yes yeah yeah once they found out that he was in it, they were just like, I think Paul Castellano? I don't think it was Castellano. Castellano was pretty old school. I have a Dino in my head, too.

Yeah. Well, Tony the Chin, famously Giganti, would pretend to be mentally a walker. I agree with that. They did a similar kind of thing with Uncle Junior and the Sopranos. Yeah. Enough. Now, one thing about this is, and so we love mob characters, and that's the beauty of mob stories like yours. So, one thing readers should know is this may be your final three books that you're going to write, and after that, you're going to do something else.

Talk to us a little bit about that, if you would. Yeah, I announced my retirement the other day. Again, these three books are done. They're in the can. And I am going to retire to devote more of my energies to speaking out against the things that I see that I think are wrong. And so you're going to go work on, I think, films and different promotional things against Trumpism, I guess? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it's more of a continuation, really. We, my partner, Shane Salerno and I, that do the videos, I do Twitter and Shane and I do the videos, have been producing videos for quite some time now, since not coincidentally around 2016. You know, we produced videos for the last, you know, particularly in some cases speaking to particular states, people in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Georgia

that we thought were critical states. I think without making speeches here, you know, that I think we're at a existential moment in American democracy. You know, we're either going to keep it or we're going to lose it. It was a near run thing in 2020, you know, and with a violent insurrection and an attempt by a sitting president to subvert American democracy. We're not out of the woods, Chris. You know, some people think we are. We're not. And so I'm just going to remain engaged and more intensively in that fight. Yeah, you have a super powerful Twitter feed that I followed for years.

And every now and then I have to go, oh, yeah, he's an author, too. It's quite prolific. But, you know, like you say, there needs to be speaking out. I think I saw in your retirement announcement or something, somebody quoted you on, you know, there haven't been any subpoenas to these GOP representatives. I think I read this morning that they're going to be doing that or reaching out to them to come testify.

Yeah, reaching out to them to go testify is something quite different than a speaking of bosses, right? That, I mean, you know, so far we've had, what do they call them? Courtesy meetings? Yeah. I don't know what a courtesy meeting is. I don't know that I've ever seen one or had a courtesy meeting. You know, I'm old enough, as you can see, to remember Watergate, where we had publicly televised hearings with people under oath on penalty of

perjury. Yeah. And that's what we should be doing here. If you look at what Nixon did at Watergate and you compare it to what Trump did in and around and before January 6th, right, you're talking about a misdemeanor versus a felony murder yeah so you know if they're going to invite people to come speak with them then they being the committee why not do it why not issue subpoenas and there's there's plenty of predicate for doing it it's it's on television it's on tape we all saw it issue subpoenas and then bring them in under oath and then they have the constitutional right to take the fifth amendment but let the country see them doing it let them see them do it i i totally agree with you it's one of the problems with being a democrat

i'm a moderate democrat and and one of the problems of being a democrat was always trying to play by the rules we try to try and keep the bar high and play you know do the right thing and i'm not saying we shouldn't do you know try to do that as much as we can but we sometimes we don't play as dirty as these guys do i mean you remember like what was it like seven house investigations into the hillary whatever he knows yeah and you know it's it's just insane and we we don't play rough or box rough. One of the things you talked about your announcement was for retirement was was, you know, our problem with Democratic messaging. And we don't do that. Well, we don't, you know, listen for a long time. And with ultimate respect to these people who who I love, you know, said that when when they go low we go high what i've said on twitter the other day is when they go low i'll be there waiting you know we we all know from most contact sports that the guy that with the lowest leverage wins that fight listen these guys these right-wing republicans will say anything Anything. You have them accusing people of running a child sex trafficking ring in the basement of a pizza restaurant that has no basement. accusing democratic politicians of grooming kids yeah for sexual molestation it does not get any

lower than that yeah it just doesn't and then of course there's the big lie that they're repeating every day yeah the pedophilia is a playbook out of russia putin's russia oh well yeah what a lot of people don't realize is is the gop has a real fantasy towards russia oh well yeah what a little yeah what a lot of people don't realize is is the gop has a real fantasy towards russia that's why there's so much they're after them it's the great white nation it has a ton of a ton of you know anti-free speech laws and it's a great oligarchy and that's really what they want on top of that a the theocratic sort of biblical sort of ISIS America. is that they have abandoned their belief in democracy. And the cravenness of the Republican Party post-January 6th is a shame that is never and should never wash off of them. And as people from generally our side of this thing,

as you've identified yourself, we need to be saying that message over and over and over again in very plain, simple, and yes, sometimes tough language. Yeah. This democracy is standing, in my opinion, to maybe four events. One, Pence refusing to get into that car, and they were going to probably take him to Alaska. If he got in that car, who knows where they'd take him. He knew Trump was going to take him someplace, anywhere but the capitol and keep him probably quarantined somewhere and we never would have had that vote

which would have you know god knows what that would have done the two attorney generals the attorney general and i believe their assistant who overrode that memo where they wanted to i think it was either martial law or overturn this thanks that was a big deal and then the third was just pence deciding to to you know he did try to get out of it, which is the sad part. He's calling up what the vice president, ex-vice presidents and people going, is there a way around this law? And they're like, no, man, it's the Constitution, baby. And I think really those four events that you might be able to think of some are, but to me, those are like real linchpins. Absolutely.

And one more was the physical assault itself how close it came if they would have gotten a hold of anybody nancy pelosi what if they had found nancy pelosi what if nancy pelosi had been in that office yeah what if they found mitt romney what if what if you know i mean we were feet away from a violent coup mitt rom Romney was. We were feet away from becoming a banana republic. That gentleman who was the security guard who took them up the opposite way. God bless him. Yeah, who baited them up. So I'm glad you're doing what you're doing because you have a very powerful voice.

I'm glad you're using it to save this democracy. I mean, this democracy is, people don't realize how easily and quickly these things fall. We saw that in Hungary in 2020. Benjamin Franklin once said, shortly after the revolution succeeded, he said, now you have a republic. I hope that you can keep it. Yeah, as long as you can keep it. And, you know, it's interesting to me the apathy people have. You know, I mean, I almost wonder if, you know, people loved Donald Trump for his bombastic, you know, and I've studied leadership.

You know, my book, Beacons of Leadership, we talk about leadership. And they love that bombastic Jerry Springer sort of stuff. And I almost wonder if we just have become the Jerry Springer, Kim Kardashian nation where that's really just too much of the toxicity that we love and you know biden is so quiet you know the messaging i mean he's a good effective leader he does his job and that's really what you want as a leader you don't want a guy who's not talking a bunch of bulls yeah right do you want him doing a bunch of bs doing a bunch of bs maybe not yeah yes bs so less talking and and more doing. More doing. Yeah.

I'm trying to say. Sure. But people aren't getting it. And I think people see him as a weak leader because he's a bit soft, but he's doing what he does. But you know what I mean? The president. I don't know what you mean. Listen, I think that simple or simplistic, rather, answers to complicated questions are always attractive to people.

You know? And that's what Trump offered. We have a problem at the border? Build a wall. It doesn't get any more simplistic than that, but also false, right? Yeah. Not address the issue. Listen, you know, President Biden is a basically decent man following the footsteps of a basically indecent man. Yeah.

You know, and that has problems of its own. I am convinced that Trump is going to run again. I hope I'm wrong. I'm convinced that it's going to be a tough fight. Hope I'm wrong. But we need to remember that we won. It seems that that slipped people's minds. Yeah.

We won by seven million votes when you had a binary choice between those two people right yeah biden won i think the country's fatigued i think the country's mentally fatigued you know after the the chaos of the trump years and, of course, the anxiety and the sorrow and the difficulties from COVID. I think we're a tired country in a tired world. And right now, we don't want to think about these tough things. But they are going to come up and then there's going to be some choices to be made and we need to be ready for that. And everyone's concerned about, you know, their pocketbooks and what goes on. And that seems to be what sometimes makes people vote. You know, I'm worried like you are about 2022 and 2024.

You know, I just, the endless things I'm going to hear about Hunter Biden during, you know, if they take the house, which they likely will, according to historical things. Yeah. We need a reminder, like what you're activating to do and other people are doing well you know the one thing man can learn from his history is man never learns from his history is my saying so you know we have to keep being reminded of like the the fallout and what happened and the danger too i mean this is how fascism rises people sell out because they're like this is what this is what they did to putin for 20 years they're like well he gave us economic yeah he was a stability and jobs and money and our

banks accounts are full so let him do whatever the hell he wants yeah what could go wrong you know fascism works because the trains run on time right no exactly until they know until they don't until everything falls apart you know and it's listen i mean you know on-time trains are not a not a good trade-off yeah you know not that the not that the previous administration by the way was competent it wasn't like the trains were running on time and everything was great look what the previous administration did with the pandemic yeah totally incompetent you know a batch of lives that cost a lot of people their lives it's not like they were displaying any kind of great efficiency on on any level yeah we've had a number of authors

on the document in fact pandemic incorporated i think was just recently on the gentleman wrote it is it was insane what was going on just just insane so i'm glad you're i'm glad you're doing this work i imagine are a lot of your fan base, though, for your books going, please don't leave? Listen, I've been on tours, we said, for a few days now. And, you know, meeting my readers again after that long pandemic gap. And listen, most people are supportive. You know, yes, of course. I mean, it's very nice of them to say, please don't leave and please keep writing books.

I mean, that touches me, touches my heart. You know, I owe everything to those people. Yeah. But I think I've also met, and, you know, there are a lot of the same people, you know, who are saying, yeah, good for what you're doing. We're with you. Let us know what we can do. No. And so I think, yeah, we've got a movement going. And the books are going to go out over, what, the next two to three years maybe? Are they going to be released? Yeah, a year and a year. So the second will be out April 23 and the third April of 24.

There you go. So they've got something to do with their time, and then hopefully in 2024 we're in a better place. Yeah, you know, the other thing I want to do is help promote younger, aspiring writers and talk to people about their books and their work. And so, you know, give them plenty to read. That's definitely good. Well, Don, it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Thank you for coming by. I've enjoyed it, man. It's been a good conversation. Thanks for having me. Thank you. And we enjoy your work and everything you're trying to do. Give me your dot coms, if you would, so people can find you on the interwebs. Yeah, DonWinslow.com, DonWinslow Twitter.

There you go. Okay. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to YouTube.com, 4Chess Chris Voss. Hit the bell notification button, Goodreads.com, 4Chess Chris Voss. See everything we're reading and reviewing everywhere on all of our accounts across social media. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next

time.