The Kings of Cool by Don Winslow
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Kings of Cool is a fairly complicated read. Or should I say relatively. Not Anna Karenina complicated, more like Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels complicated. But you should be able to follow it, if you do few things.
One is to read the sequel first. Read Savages before you read The Kings of Cool. The prequel does not stand on its own, which would be ironic, except that the prequel was written after the sequel. Which is why Kings is subtitled “Prequel to Savages.” Should put “prequel” in quotes. Kings is more of an extended flashback.
(Good on Winslow if he had that back story in mind when he wrote Savages. I’d me even more impressed if he just took what he had and back-filled appropriately. But never mind that.)
Another thing you’re going to want to do is pay attention, but try not to guess what happens (even though you’ve already read the sequel and know what happens). The Kings of Cool does a balancing act between being another sex-drugs-violence thriller, and backstory—like maybe what fan fiction would be if it were written by the original author. I said it’s a complicated read, but that doesn’t meant the plot is complicated—I mean it is, but it’s not the plot that makes things complicated. It’s the balancing act.
The Kings of Cool answers a few incidental questions that you may have had from reading Savages, but then creates a few questions of its own. Another book in the works? Maybe. I think Winslow’s good for it. Maybe a story that falls in between the events of Kings and Savages.
(But that’s speculation again. Never mind that too.) The other thing you need to do when readings Kings is take yourself out of it. You’re a Boomer, or a Gen Xer, or a (what do we call Gen-X’es kids. I have no idea. I shall cynically coin: ) Bieberoh (ha, now they hate me). But the flashback characters are not the hippies you were, the 90s kids you were, the cell-phone junkies you are. You have to suspend that disbelief, and nevertheless tap into the angst and disillusionment that every generation feels when their rise to power is eclipsed by the realization that previous generation (or two) still has all the power.
Cause California’s a different planet and Laguna Beach is a different moon. You need to turn on, tune in, and sell out.