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The Force by Don Winslow
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The Force (edition 2017)

by Don Winslow (Author)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
9465522,078 (3.86)17
Fiction. Thriller. HTML:

All Denny Malone wants is to be a good cop.

He's the king of Manhattan North, a highly decorated NYPD detective sergeant and the real leader of "Da Force." Malone and his crew are the smartest, the toughest, the quickest, the bravest, and the baddest, an elite unit given unrestricted authority to wage war on gangs, drugs, and guns. Every day and every night for the eighteen years he's spent on the Job, Malone has served on the front lines, witnessing the hurt, the dead, the victims, the perps. He's done whatever it takes to serve and protect in a city built by ambition and corruption, where no one is clean-including Malone himself.

What only a few know is that Denny Malone is dirty: he and his partners have stolen millions of dollars in drugs and cash in the wake of the biggest heroin bust in the city's history. Now Malone is caught in a trap and being squeezed by the feds, and he must walk the thin line between betraying his brothers and partners, the Job, his family, and the woman he loves, trying to survive, body and soul, while the city teeters on the brink of a racial conflagration that could destroy them all.

The Force is a haunting story of greed and violence, inequality and race, crime and injustice, retribution and redemption that reveals the seemingly insurmountable tensions between the police and the diverse citizens they serve. A searing portrait of a city and a courageous, heroic, and deeply flawed man who stands at the edge of its abyss, it is a masterpiece of urban realism full of shocking twists, leavened by flashes of dark humor, a morally complex and utterly riveting dissection of modern American society and the controversial issues confronting us today.

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… (more)
Member:rgwillie
Title:The Force
Authors:Don Winslow (Author)
Info:William Morrow (2017), 496 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:
Tags:to-read, 2017, owned

Work Information

The Force by Don Winslow

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» See also 17 mentions

English (47)  Spanish (3)  French (2)  Swedish (1)  Italian (1)  German (1)  All languages (55)
Showing 1-5 of 47 (next | show all)
Deja read ( )
  postsign | Dec 28, 2023 |
Fast and entertaining. Not very deep characters ( )
  jcvogan1 | Mar 26, 2023 |
This book kept me up at night, reading it, feeling Malone's frustration with the cards he is dealt and the problems he makes for himself. And there are many problems he makes for himself. This is a very honest look at the situation of the police and their relationship to the minorities they serve. Both sides are represented, but the police are more represented.

Denny Malone, the King of Manhattan North. What kind of guy is he? Denny Malone happens upon a young black boy in a tenement hallway in his precinct. He talks to the kid a little bit and happens to notice that the kid has welts and belt-marks on his back. After some prompting the boy tells him it was his mother's boyfriend. Malone asks the kid where he lives and takes him home where the boy's mother and her boyfriend are sitting at the table, eating. Malone proceeds to beat the boyfriend, break his wrist and tell him that if he is ever seen in Manhattan North again, he will face Malone. He throws out the boyfriend. The mother, who has been quiet throughout the ordeal, says, "Don't I deserve love, too?" Malone says, "Love your kid..."

And he's also the kind of guy who will execute a drug dealer and then take his drugs and money and split it between him and his partner and close friends. The drug dealer had ordered the execution of a family (including two kids) because the dad was a dealer who did something to anger his employer.

In Manhattan North the cops work with the mob, the Latino gangs and the black gangs to control them and make a buck or two within strict codes. Malone and Da Force (hated "Da" in that-too cutesy) will be the go-betweens when one gang wants to sell to another gang but hates them because of their color. That way everyone makes money.

Winslow expertly navigates a very fine line between realism and racism. Example-there is a black gang called the Spades and it's capitalized every time so it took me a minute to realize that Malone wasn't just calling African-Americans "spades", but referring to gang-members who belong to a gang that call themselves the Spades. These cops tease each other about their various ethnicities and no one gets angry, which I found authentic. Malone doesn't care what color anyone is, even though the racial epithets run rampant in this tour de force.These are the blue-collar guys I've known all my life. Except that they have power. Malone isn't more complicated than the average guy, but as a cop he has a lot more power over a lot more people. Malone has the intelligence and the ability to strategize, but he is still surprised when everything goes south and all his men are in jeopardy.

Writer nerd mechanics: This is told from Malone's point of view in a very readable, very authentic 3rd person voice. Winslow pulls off the present tense admirably. There are info-dumps, where it seems that the author dumped in paragraphs of quotes from cops in real life. It's obvious that Winslow did his research on this. ( )
  naturegirlj9 | Mar 26, 2023 |
A gritty and intense crime thriller following a corrupt NYPD detective as he struggles to maintain his grip on power and avoid the consequences of his actions. The Force sports a complex plot, characters of depth, and a brutally frank look at the dark side of law enforcement. Like King's It is to the horror genre, Winslow's The Force should be the police procedural classic of the 21st century. ( )
  Cam_Torrens | Mar 17, 2023 |
A relentless crime thriller. I haven't read any of Winslow's stuff before this, but I might have to change that now. Denny Malone is an intriguing and unforgettable central character (I hesitate to call him a "protagonist"). ( )
  keithlaf | Jan 14, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 47 (next | show all)
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Don Winslowprimary authorall editionscalculated
Graham, DionNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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« Les flics sont des gens comme les autres », dit-elle, sans raison.
« Oui, au début, à ce qu'il paraît ».

Raymond Chandler, Adieu, ma jolie
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Denny Malone était bien le dernier homme au monde que l'on pouvait s'attendre à voir finir dans une cellule du Metropolitan Correctional Center, sur Park Row.
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Fiction. Thriller. HTML:

All Denny Malone wants is to be a good cop.

He's the king of Manhattan North, a highly decorated NYPD detective sergeant and the real leader of "Da Force." Malone and his crew are the smartest, the toughest, the quickest, the bravest, and the baddest, an elite unit given unrestricted authority to wage war on gangs, drugs, and guns. Every day and every night for the eighteen years he's spent on the Job, Malone has served on the front lines, witnessing the hurt, the dead, the victims, the perps. He's done whatever it takes to serve and protect in a city built by ambition and corruption, where no one is clean-including Malone himself.

What only a few know is that Denny Malone is dirty: he and his partners have stolen millions of dollars in drugs and cash in the wake of the biggest heroin bust in the city's history. Now Malone is caught in a trap and being squeezed by the feds, and he must walk the thin line between betraying his brothers and partners, the Job, his family, and the woman he loves, trying to survive, body and soul, while the city teeters on the brink of a racial conflagration that could destroy them all.

The Force is a haunting story of greed and violence, inequality and race, crime and injustice, retribution and redemption that reveals the seemingly insurmountable tensions between the police and the diverse citizens they serve. A searing portrait of a city and a courageous, heroic, and deeply flawed man who stands at the edge of its abyss, it is a masterpiece of urban realism full of shocking twists, leavened by flashes of dark humor, a morally complex and utterly riveting dissection of modern American society and the controversial issues confronting us today.

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