Don Winslow's superbly written crime thriller trilogy featuring former mobster turned entrepreneur Danny Ryan comes to an explosive end in City in Ruins. Danny should be relishing his success in the Las Vegas casino hotel business, but instead a myriad of past grudges rolls into town seeking payback.

Danny owns two hotels south of the Lavinia, the last hotel on the Vegas Strip and in need of a makeover. His rival, Vern Winegard, owns the casinos to the north of the Lavinia, because "Whoever ends up with the Lavinia will control the most prestigious location left on the Strip, and Las Vegas is a prestige kind of town." While Vern isn't a mobster himself, he has inadvertently let a shady character become his head of security and a source of chaos for those around him.

Danny is trying to go straight as a businessman, but because of his sketchy background, detailed in City on Fire and City of Dreams, ownership of his hotels remains purposefully obscure, though under the banner of Danny's company, Tara Group. Organized crime is not allowed in Las Vegas, and the Nevada Gaming Control Board intends that it stay that way. To keep the focus off himself, Danny's two real estate partners, Dom Rinaldi and Jerry Kush, own the company on paper, while he's listed as the operations manager. Danny has a family to look after, and maintaining the appearance of staying on the right side of the law is a priority these days.

But Danny is ambitious, which is why he's focused on the Lavinia Hotel and the prime real estate it occupies. The old hotel holds the key to a much bigger dream of his, one that will change Vegas and bring about a much friendlier but still spectacular future for the gambling mecca. The Lavinia is currently owned by George Stavros, and Stavros has already promised to sell it to Vern Winegard. Danny thinks if he can get Stavros to have a sit-down, he can convince Stavros to sell the Lavinia to him instead.

Before he can set that plan into motion, there are a few speed bumps to navigate, like stopping the gambling commission from probing into his past, figuring out how to subtly bribe officials, and avoiding being thrown in prison by a rogue FBI agent whose lover Danny killed in a shootout. All this leads to a showdown in which Danny's city of refuge appears destined for destruction. But in an equally compelling subplot about where his story started, another empire rises.

What Winslow excels in doing with City in Ruins is blurring the lines between the good guys and bad guys. Several chapters are preceded by quotes from Virgil's Aeneid, with Danny as a nod to a modern version of the Greco-Roman hero Aeneas. (Lavinia is also a reference to the Aeneid--it's the name of Aeneas's last wife.) Danny is on a journey to find himself and a home. He may have engaged in illegal activities and even killed (in self-defense) in the past, but now he's all about being on the straight and narrow, and taking care of his family, especially his mother and his young son. Like Aeneas, Danny's fate is predetermined, and his past keeps raising its violent head, forcing him to confront it if he wants to move forward. Vern is a legit businessman and would normally never consider physically threatening a rival, but Vern's head of security convinces him that Danny intends to kill him and that Vern's only choice is to retaliate with violence. Vern is a reluctant nemesis to Danny; City of Ruins is at its most engrossing when it challenges readers' notions of right vs. wrong.

Despite all the shady dealings and bloody violence, the dialogue is often funny and raunchy and delivered with maximum sass. One can easily imagine gangsters bantering in the way Winslow depicts them--he peppers moments of levity over a constant sense of foreboding. When a mobster's wife who runs a seafood restaurant needs fresh fish, and another mobster, who controls the supply at the docks, tries to pressure her for sex as a quid pro quo, she replies: "You want me to f*** you for tuna?... A hand job for calamari? If I want swordfish, I guess I have to let you f*** me up the a**. Hey, why not? You're doing it anyway."

The combination of snappy dialogue, sharp characterizations, and probing of moral issues, all inspired by classic works, makes it clear that Winslow is an incredibly smart writer and deep thinker. He takes his time between books, and they're always worth waiting for. Unfortunately, the author has announced that City in Ruins is his final novel, which gives fans more reason to read and savor it. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis

(photo: Robert Gallagher)

Don Winslow is a New York Times and international bestselling author of 25 novels, several of which have been adapted for the screen. Winslow has won numerous accolades, including Italy's Raymond Chandler Award and the U.K.'s Ian Fleming Silver Dagger. He resides in California with his wife. His latest, and final, novel is City in Ruins (Morrow, April 2, 2024), the conclusion to his acclaimed Danny Ryan Trilogy (City on Fire; City of Dreams).

City in Ruins is the final installment of the Danny Ryan trilogy. Why end the story here?

I've always conceived of this project as a trilogy, and Danny's life fell into three distinct phases. In the first book, City on Fire, he started as a minor combatant in a losing war but ended up as a leader, mostly by virtue of being the last man left standing.

In the second volume, City of Dreams, his life shifts to becoming a fugitive from that war, wandering the country with what's left of his crew, but more importantly with an infant son and an aging father he needs to care for. The book also centers around a tragic love story, so the novel is mostly about relationships--how does Danny try to relate to loved ones while being a criminal on the run?

The third phase of his life, City in Ruins, is yet more distinct: Danny finally finds a place to set his feet--Las Vegas--and builds an empire, which he then has to protect in a war. He has to protect his family and the people he loves, especially his son, Ian. City in Ruins is largely about fathers and sons--there are four sets of them in the book--and these relationships drive the action. Because he's a father, Danny is always looking to the future. The tragedy is that the past from which he was running catches up with him. To ensure his son's future, Danny has to return to his own past; to make his son everything he can be, Danny has to become what he once was. Danny's life comes completely around, the circle is closed, so that seemed like the right place to end the story.

Danny wants to be a legit businessman but being in Vegas makes it hard for him. Why did he choose Sin City of all places to go straight? Would he do better somewhere else?

Maybe Danny would have been better off in a more--shall we say "mundane"?--locale, but where else could he build an empire? The Danny in City on Fire had no ambitions beyond maybe buying his own house someday. The Danny we meet in City in Ruins is a different guy. Now he wants generational wealth for his family. He sees himself as a leader.

Aeneas founded Rome, and I had to ask myself, what could the modern equivalent be? It took an embarrassingly long time to come up with that answer, and it was so obvious: Las Vegas.

Where else can you build anything you have the money for? You can build Rome (Caesar's Palace), Paris, Venice, Egypt--anything you want. There's a reason I called Danny's big project Il Sogno--build it.

Why did you decide to quote Virgil's Aeneid before some chapters?

The Aeneid is the spine of the entire trilogy. My objective in writing these books was to take the stories, characters, and themes from the Aeneid, the Iliad, the Odyssey, [and] certain Greek dramas and mythology to tell a fully modern crime story. This isn't as odd as it might sound, because when I read these classic works, I was struck not only by their similarities to my beloved crime fiction genre, but also by the parallels with actual American criminal history. I felt I'd already heard these stories because I'd grown up with them. Mob wars were in the daily newspapers; local gangsters were not only topics of (furtive) conversations, but were actually around in restaurants, bars, even on the beaches. And it's simply impossible to look at contemporary crime fiction and not see its debt to the great themes of the classics.

Danny is a modern-day Aeneas. His life story follows that epic hero from his participation in the losing side of the Trojan War--told in the Iliad--to his wanderings and finally to his empire building--the founding of Rome--in the latter books of the Aeneid. This is also Danny's arc. Aeneas is mostly trying to find a home; so is Danny. Aeneas is trying to protect the people he loves; so is Danny. Aeneas benefits from the actions of his powerful mother, the goddess Aphrodite. Danny does as well, although his relationship with his mother, Madeleine, is difficult. Aeneas builds an empire; so does Danny. Aeneas fights a bloody war to protect it; likewise Danny. There are differences as well--Aeneas was famously devout; Danny is a lapsed Catholic. Most of all, Aeneas is a classic epic hero, while Danny--I hope, anyway--is a fully modern man.

There's a subplot focusing on the character of Chris Palumbo, who seems to have enough going on that he could front his own series of books. Did you ever consider spinning him off into one?

No, I never did, although he plays a larger role in City in Ruins than I'd probably intended. I guess I just started to enjoy Chris's humor and his outlook on life. At the same time, I never wanted to forget he was a mobster capable of cold-blooded violence.

In terms of the trilogy's classical underpinnings, Chris fills the role of Odysseus, and I was intrigued by the later chapters of that epic, in which Odysseus spends seven years entranced by the sorceress Calypso. Also when his son launches out on a journey of his own to find his father, but especially when Odysseus returns home to reclaim his place and deal with the suitors who were besieging his wife, Penelope. All of that was a great and fun challenge to set in the experience of a contemporary mafia guy, who, like Danny, is on the run. I came up with the idea of a Nebraska farm woman who keeps Chris in her bed, and of mob guys who are running Chris's wife into bankruptcy. It took a while to figure those modern equivalencies out, which is one reason this trilogy took me almost three decades to complete.

You have several projects in development for the screen but have announced this is your last novel. Please share how and why you reached this decision. And what are the chances you'll change your mind down the road?

Thanks to great representation in the form of Shane Salerno and The Story Factory, I am very fortunate to have several projects headed for the screen. The pilot to a television series, The Border, based on my three novels about the Mexican drug cartels, has been filmed. Crime 101, based on a novella in a volume titled Broken, is slated to be a film starring Chris Hemsworth and Pedro Pascal. My novel The Winter of Frankie Machine is being produced by the creator of The Bear, Chris Storer. And this [Danny Ryan] trilogy is scheduled to become three films, with Elvis star Austin Butler playing Danny.

Regarding retirement, one thing I've learned over about 70 years now is to never say never. Having said that, the decision to retire feels final to me. You can't choose the era in which you live, and I strongly feel we are living in a time in which our democracy is under existential threat from the former president, his white-wing cronies, and white supremacists. I think what time and energies I have left are better dedicated to that fight than to writing fiction. I don't want to write the elegy on American democracy.

And, listen, I've had such a wonderful career, much bigger and better than I ever dreamed of or probably deserve. I have been so blessed in getting to tell the stories I've wanted to tell, and been wonderfully compensated for having done it.

I have no regrets, only gratitude. --Paul Dinh-McCrillis