A review by zade
A Cool Breeze on the Underground by Don Winslow

3.0

There's a reason Don Winslow was selected to carry on in Trevanian's footsteps: He's a heck of a writer. In this private-eye novel, he does a great job of developing character and makes his unlikely protagonist quite likable. More impresively, he manages to make some pretty unpleasant people seem human and even sympathetic. The plot here is not particularly original; in other hands it could have been downright hackneyed, but Winslow handles it well and never lets it get boring. The bits that are clichés for the genre are fun because Winslow makes them seem fresh even as he clearly knows they're clichés. This isn't Winslow's best work, but it's a good entertaining novel with more than a little heart.