Don Winslow Brings Crime, Corruption and The Final Score to Mystic & Noank Library Author Talk

Don Winslow Brings Crime, Corruption and The Final Score to Mystic & Noank Library Author Talk on Saturday, Sept. 19, when the bestselling crime novelist sits down with writer and longtime local arts journalist Rick Koster inside Snediker Yacht Restoration in Old Mystic.

The Mystic & Noank Library’s fifth annual Author Talk runs from 5 to 7 p.m., beginning with an hour-long reception featuring wine and hors d’oeuvres before Winslow and Koster take over the conversation at 6 p.m. Bank Square Books will also be there with copies of Winslow’s books available for purchase.

This isn’t simply a stop on a book tour. The $125-per-person evening is one of the library’s major annual fundraisers, with proceeds helping support its programs and services. It also brings together an interesting combination: a crime writer who grew up in coastal Rhode Island, a Connecticut journalist and novelist who has spent decades writing about this corner of New England, and a working Old Mystic boat shop devoted to preserving vessels from another era.

Don Winslow Took a Long Road to Crime Fiction

Before Don Winslow became a bestselling novelist, he accumulated the kind of résumé that sounds suspiciously like research for one.

The son of a sailor and a librarian, Winslow grew up in a small coastal community in Rhode Island. He left at 17 to study journalism at the University of Nebraska, where he also earned a degree in African Studies.

Then things got less conventional.

Winslow traveled through southern Africa, worked as a movie theater manager in New York and became a private investigator in Times Square. He earned a master’s degree in military history, worked for a photographic safari company in Kenya, led hiking expeditions in China and directed Shakespeare productions during summers in Oxford, England.

Through all of it, he was writing.

His first novel, A Cool Breeze on the Underground, introduced private investigator Neal Carey and earned an Edgar Award nomination. Investigative work later took Winslow and his family to California, where they lived in hotels for nearly three years while he worked cases and served as a trial consultant.

Eventually, a publishing and film deal for The Death and Life of Bobby Z allowed him to leave investigative work behind and write full time.

The detective work, travel and years spent watching people in unusual circumstances left fingerprints all over the fiction that followed.

From The Power of the Dog to City on Fire

Winslow has written more than 20 novels, but two sprawling crime sagas account for a large part of his reputation.

The Power of the Dog, published in 2005, opened an ambitious fictional chronicle of the drug trade and the decades-long conflict surrounding it. Winslow continued the story with The Cartel and The Border, creating a trilogy stretching across roughly four decades of the war on drugs.

Then he came back toward home.

City on Fire, published in 2022, begins another trilogy, this time centered on Irish and Italian organized-crime families in Rhode Island. City of Dreams followed in 2023 and City in Ruins completed the trilogy in 2024.

The Rhode Island setting brings Winslow’s crime fiction back to the landscape where he grew up. It’s also likely to give Saturday’s Old Mystic audience something familiar beneath the gunfire and betrayals: coastal New England, family loyalties, neighborhood identities and communities where everybody seems separated by only a few degrees.

Winslow’s books have also repeatedly attracted Hollywood. Savages became a 2012 Oliver Stone film, while The Death and Life of Bobby Z was adapted for the screen earlier. His work has drawn interest over the years from filmmakers and actors including Michael Mann, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Six Crimes, Six Stories in The Final Score

Saturday’s conversation arrives with a newer book on the table.

The Final Score trades the enormous canvas of Winslow’s trilogies for six shorter crime novellas. The stories stand independently, but Winslow returns to familiar territory: criminals making calculations, ordinary people being pushed into extraordinary choices, corruption, loyalty and the moment when somebody decides the risk is worth taking.

The title story begins with an irresistible premise for crime fiction: an impossible multimillion-dollar casino robbery.

A legendary thief facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life behind bars sees precisely what everyone else sees. The score can’t be pulled off.

That’s what makes him want to do it.

Elsewhere, a college-bound teenager delivering illegal alcohol finds his future threatened by a crooked police officer, a customer and a phony guru. Two mobsters swap stories over breakfast in another tale, while The North Wing puts an otherwise honest patrol officer between loyalty to his profession and loyalty to a troublesome cousin.

The shorter form changes the machinery. Winslow doesn’t have hundreds of pages to slowly tighten the screws. Characters have to arrive quickly, choices have to matter almost immediately and the trapdoor beneath them can’t take forever to open.

Those six stories, along with the much larger novels that preceded them, give Koster plenty to work with Saturday night.

Rick Koster Takes the Other Chair

The person asking the questions is a writer himself.

Rick Koster spent decades as an arts journalist and columnist at The Day in New London, covering music, books, food and the cultural life of southeastern Connecticut. Before journalism, he spent years playing rock music, and he’s also the author of several books.

His fiction includes White Ghost Blues, a supernatural story steeped in New Orleans music, along with other novels and nonfiction.

Koster has become a familiar interviewer for the Mystic & Noank Library’s annual event. He also sat across from bestselling Connecticut novelist Wally Lamb during the library’s 2025 fundraiser at Snediker.

That local connection should make Saturday’s conversation different from a generic promotional interview. Winslow grew up in coastal Rhode Island and later returned to the state as the setting for the City on Fire trilogy. Koster has spent much of his professional life documenting southeastern Connecticut and its arts community.

There’s plenty of common New England ground between them.

A Book Talk Inside a Wooden Boat Shop

The setting might be the most unusual part of the evening.

Snediker Yacht Restoration isn’t an event hall dressed to resemble a boat shop. It’s the real thing.

The Old Mystic company has spent more than 30 years building, repairing and restoring classic wooden boats using traditional construction techniques. Its small crew collectively represents about 150 years of boatbuilding experience.

The projects vary dramatically. Some boats return to the water to race or cruise. Others are museum pieces that may never sail again.

Among Snediker’s recent restorations is The Kid, the last surviving American Yacht Club One-Design Class Raceabout. Designed by B.B. Crowninshield and built by Rice Brothers in 1902, the boat was originally constructed for yachtsman Oliver Harriman Jr. and later raced on Long Island Sound under owner Clifford D. Mallory as Cliphora. Following an extensive restoration at Snediker, the century-old boat sailed again.

For an author fundraiser in Mystic, it’s hard to imagine a setting more rooted in the character of the region: wooden hulls, old boats and the smell and machinery of a working restoration shop rather than rows of seats in a hotel ballroom.

The library has made the location part of the tradition, too. Its 2024 annual report notes that author and historian Hampton Sides appeared for a fundraiser at Snediker while promoting The Wide Wide Sea. Wally Lamb followed in 2025 with The River Is Waiting.

Now Winslow becomes the fifth annual Author Talk’s featured writer.

An Evening That Supports the Library

Before the books take center stage, the evening begins socially.

Doors open for a reception from 5 to 6 p.m., with drinks and hors d’oeuvres included in admission. Bank Square Books will offer Winslow’s books for sale, and the conversation with Koster follows from 6 to 7 p.m.

The library will also recognize its 2026 Volunteers of the Year, Friends of the Library Co-Presidents Kathy Busse and Patricia Menno-Coveney, for their service to the organization and community.

Most importantly, the night raises money.

The Mystic & Noank Library is a nonprofit organization, and the Author Talk is part of its 2026 annual fundraising effort. Proceeds help sustain and expand the library’s programs and services. Tickets are limited, and the library says it expects the event to sell out.

So, yes, there’s a bestselling crime writer in the middle of a wooden-boat restoration shop on Saturday night.

But there’s also a library behind him.

More information is available at the Event Website link below.

To purchase tickets, click the Event Ticketing link below.

Details

Event: 5th Annual Author Talk with Don Winslow at Snediker Yacht Restoration
Date: Saturday, Sept. 19, 2026
Time: 5–7 p.m.
Reception: 5–6 p.m. with drinks and hors d’oeuvres
Author Conversation: 6–7 p.m.
Featured Author: Don Winslow
Interviewer: Rick Koster
Featured Book: The Final Score
Location: Snediker Yacht Restoration
Address: 35 Campground Road, Old Mystic, CT 06372
Admission: $125 per person
Age Group: Adults
Books: Bank Square Books will have Winslow’s books available for purchase
Fundraiser: Proceeds support Mystic & Noank Library programs and services
Honorees: 2026 Volunteers of the Year Kathy Busse and Patricia Menno-Coveney, co-presidents of the Friends of the Mystic & Noank Library
Availability: Space is limited, and the library expects the event to sell out
Contact: Chris Bradley, 860-536-7721

 

 

Featured image is an artistic representation inspired by the event and may not depict the actual people, location, or activities shown.