The Trail to Buddha's Mirror - Don Winslow [149]
He left before darkness fell, padding back through the snow into a long wooden building. He inhaled the incense smoldering by a statue of Buddha, then climbed the staircase and went into his cell, a ten-by-ten cubicle that smelled of pine, and sat down on his kang. He lit his kerosene lamp, took Roderick Random from under his sleeping mat, and started to read.
A BIOGRAPHY OF DON WINSLOW
Don Winslow is the New York Times bestselling author of thirteen crime and mystery novels as well as a number of short stories and screenplays. His first novel, A Cool Breeze on the Underground (1991), was nominated for an Edgar Award, and California Fire and Life (1999) received the Shamus Award, which honors the year’s best detective novel.
Winslow was born in 1953 in New York City, and he grew up in Perryville, Rhode Island, a small coastal town. His mother was a librarian and his father a Navy officer. Both parents instilled in Winslow a love of storytelling, and the bookshelves at home were well stocked with literary classics, which Winslow was encouraged to explore. When his father stayed up late swapping sailor stories with his buddies, Winslow would hide under the dining room table to eavesdrop.
Winslow had an unusually varied career before becoming a fulltime writer, beginning with a series of jobs as a child actor. After high school, he attended the University of Nebraska and majored in African history. He then moved back to New York City where he managed movie theaters and became a private investigator. Winslow moonlighted as a PI while pursuing a master’s degree in military history. He also lived for a time in Africa, where he worked as a safari guide, and in China, where he led hiking tours. Winslow completed A Cool Breeze on the Underground while in China.
A Cool Breeze draws from Winslow’s experiences tracking missing persons while in New York. Protagonist Neal Carey is a graduate student studying English literature who is drawn by past underworld connections into a career as a private investigator. Winslow went on to write four other novels with Neal Carey as the main character, often set in locales where the author had resided at some point. The Trail to Buddha’s Mirror (1992) has Carey chasing a scientist through China. Way Down on the High Lonely (1993) and While Drowning in the Desert (1996) are set on the west coast of the United States, where Winslow moved after marrying his wife, Jean, and publishing his first novel.
Winslow’s recent fiction is often set in Southern California, where he currently lives. The cross-border drug war, California organized crime, and surf culture are common themes in his later work. His style bears the spirit of his settings, and his prose is notable for its spare dialogue and deadpan narration, as well as the technical accuracy that comes from his many years working as a private investigator.
A number of Winslow’s novels have been adapted for film. A 2007 movie based on The Death and Life of Bobby Z (1997) starred Laurence Fishburne, and The Winter of Frankie Machine (2006) is under production and set to star Robert DeNiro. Winslow’s latest novel, Savages (2010), has received stellar reviews, and the author is currently adapting the novel for film with Oliver Stone.
A Winslow family photo taken in Rhode Island in the 1960s. Winslow (front left) is seen here with his father, mother, both sets of grandparents, sister (Kristine Rolofson, also a novelist), and dog.
Winslow in his 1972 high school yearbook photo.
Winslow juggling at his nephew Ben’s birthday party in Beyond Hope, Idaho, where he lived off and on in the mid-1970s. He ran cattle but also “had a very macho job driving a salad-dressing truck. There would have been no Thousand Island dressing in Libby, Montana, without men like me.” It was in a cabin in Beyond Hope that Winslow started writing Cool Breeze on the Underground.
Winslow fishing on Sandy Brook, near his old home in Riverton, Connecticut, in the early 1990s. He says he was “lousy at it, but was an enthusiastic