Instant New York Times BestsellerBest of 2017 – included on best-of lists by the New York Times, NPR, Barnes & Noble, Publisher’s Weekly, LitHub, BookPage, Booklist, TheRealBookSpy.com, the Financial Times (UK) and the Daily Mail (UK) “The Force is mesmerizing, a triumph. Think The Godfather, only with cops. It’s that good.” — Stephen KingThe acclaimed, award-winning, bestselling author of … Financial Times (UK) and the Daily Mail (UK)
“The Force is mesmerizing, a triumph. Think The Godfather, only with cops. It’s that good.”
— Stephen King
The acclaimed, award-winning, bestselling author of The Cartel—voted one of the Best Books of the Year by more than sixty publications, including the New York Times—makes his William Morrow debut with a cinematic epic as explosive, powerful, and unforgettable as Mystic River and The Wire.
Our ends know our beginnings, but the reverse isn’t true . . .
All Denny Malone wants is to be a good cop.
He is “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 special 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.
Based on years of research inside the NYPD, this is the great cop novel of our time and a book only Don Winslow could write: a haunting and heartbreaking 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, The Force is a masterpiece of urban living full of shocking and surprising twists, leavened by flashes of dark humor, a morally complex and utterly riveting dissection of modern American society and the controversial issues confronting and dividing us today.
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Great book inspired many conversations. Loved the characters, emotionally involved with them, heartbreaking. A window into the life of cops, and their
Families. Just a great writer.
If you like police procedural, this one is the best. Takes you through police procedures as they bring down a special talented dedicated cop.
The Force was interesting as told first person by a realistic detective in NYC.
Great story teller.
This was a great book. Very hard to put this one down. Gritty cop book that if you combined the movies Training Day with The Godfather.
disappointing
I gave it only 4 stars because it did not quite live up to the author’s 5 star trilogy about the Mexican drug cartels/DEA. Recommend all, plus everything else by Don Winslow.
Very well written, very real, almost too real. I don’t like to think of cops the way they’re portrayed. Can the system really be this flawed? Yes, it’s a novel. Certainly not a comic book or a Marvel flick. Again, to real. Almost gave up on story but stayed with its characters.
This is a hard book to read but not because it’s not a great book. It smacks you in the face with the realistic world of big city cops and how things work in their lives. Not for the faint of heart but highly recommended nonetheless.
I’d heard a lot of talk about Don Winslow. This was my first outing with him and he didn’t disappoint. Gritty, realistic, and down in the gutter. A great read!
Winslow is one of the best Suspense authors out there. The Force is a gritty story about political and police corruption in NYC. This book is unputdownable.
Unputdownable. Winslow is a god.
Don Winslow is among the best writers in this genre. The Force is pulsating!
Undercover cops, mafia dons and wiseguys, killers and corruption everywhere. What’s not to like?
One honest look at NYPD at its worst
Good read but the language could have been toned down. If I hadn’t ready his first books, would not have purchased. Disappointed in the repetitive “bomb” word. Know it was pretty realistic but in bad taste for me.
I doubt that many cops fit this portrayal but I’ll bet there are a few.
A gritty and tough story about a dirty yet heroic super cop in NYC. The dialogue is exceptional, the action is fast paced, the characters are believable, and the ending inevitably tragic.
Best cop book I’ve read in 10 years.
This is another brilliant novel from Don Winslow, author of The Power of the Dog and The Winter of Frankie Machine. At the heart of the story is Detective Sergeant Denny Malone of the N.Y.P.D, a deeply flawed character in a corrupt and brutally flawed system.
Malone runs a small elite task force charged with chasing down drug dealers, gun runners, gang members and other such scum. He thinks of himself as the “King of Manhattan North,” and to Malone’s way of thinking, the ends almost always justify the means. He and his team often act outside of the law in order to “police” the city, and for the most part, their superiors and the Powers That Be turn a blind eye. In a city riven by race and class, the P.D.’s brass want good statistics and the citizens just want the criminals kept away from their doorsteps. How that happens is not much of a concern to any of them.
Denny Malone comes from a long line of policemen, and all he ever wanted was to be a good cop. But from almost the moment he left the Academy, Malone allowed himself to be slowly corrupted until now, he’s not any better than and not much different from the thugs he’s supposed to be chasing. He and his team administer justice as they see fit, and along the way they rip off cash and drugs, making themselves a fortune in the process. They live like princes, but the day of reckoning is surely coming and when it does, Denny Malone will be sorely tested.
Malone is one of the most compelling figures in crime fiction to come along in years, and Winslow’s indictment of the police force, the prosecutors, the lawyers and the politicians who run New York City is searing. This is one of the most depressing stories you’ll ever read, and one of the most beautifully written. It’s like watching a train wreck unfolding in slow motion. You can’t take your eyes off it, and once you pick up this book you cannot put it down until you’ve reluctantly read the final page. This is easily the book of the summer and one can only wonder where Don Winslow might go from here.