Review: The Winter of Frankie Machine

The Winter of Frankie Machine by Don Winslow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"It's a lot of work being me"

Frank Machianno is a worker, a businessman. He owns a bait shop on San Diego pier, supplies fish to the best local restaurants and has a property rental portfolio. Frank also enjoys the finer things in life. He has season tickets for the opera; he surfs, never missing 'Gentlemen's Hour'; he enjoys cooking in the kitchen he has designed to be just right. He loves his 'cucina'.

'"This is a quality-of-life issue"' and 'quality of life is doing the little things - doing then well, doing them right.'

And Frank is a stand-up guy, a 'sheriff' on the pier, who settles a dispute between a Vietnamese fisherman and a crossbow 'hunter' when the latter 'sees something in Frank's eyes that just makes him shut his mouth.'

Because Frank Macchianno was, in an earlier time, Frankie Machine, top hitman for the San Diego mob. And it appears that someone wants Frankie dead...

I've come late to Don Winslow. I read 'The Power of the Dog' and 'The Cartel', both big sprawling visceral, and brilliant, commentaries on the War on Drugs, and his latest, 'The Force', a stunning 'dirty cop' novel whose central character, and anti-Serpico, vehemently believes that he is the good guy. 'The Winter of Frankie Machine' makes it clear to me that Mr Winslow is the natural successor to Elmore Leonard.

In the first few chapters, we get a clear picture of who Frank Machianno is, and what his life is like. And then all hell breaks loose...

With sharp dialogue, succinct, even laconic, descriptions, flashbacks that serve the plot, Winslow tells a 'hunter becomes the hunted becomes the hunter' story which could easily be formulaic in lesser hands. The novel is reminiscent of the movies of William Friedkin, or perhaps Walter Hill -I'm thinking of the likes of 'The French Connection', 'To Live and Die in LA' or 'The Driver'.

I loved 'The Winter of Frankie Machine' and, as when I discovered the novels of Elmore Leonard maybe 30 years ago, there are many novels to catch up on. And I'm going to read them all....


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