CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2025 – Interview with Don Winslow
In the run up to the announcement of the winner of the 2025 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, we’ve been talking to the shortlisted authors to find out more about their novels. Read on to learn about Don Winslow and City in Ruins.
How does it feel to be on the shortlist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger?
Of course, it feels great. Just to be mentioned in the company of past nominees and recipients, and also to be in the company of my good friend Lou Berney, is more than gratifying. Also, having spent a good part of my life in the UK – over twenty summers in London, Oxford and Cambridge – the nomination is all that more meaningful to me.
How would you summarise City in Ruins and what inspired you to tell this story?
City in Ruins is the third part of a trilogy that retells elements from the Aeneid, Odyssey, Iliad and some Greek tragic dramas in a contemporary crime setting. It finishes the story of Danny Ryan, whom we first meet as a minor player in a war being fought between the Irish and Italian mobs in New England, and who, in this final instalment, is building a gaming empire in Las Vegas.
What do you hope readers will take away from your book?
I hope a strong sense of character and story. I tried to portray real, vivid human beings (albeit drawn from the aforementioned classics) with real lives, hopes, fears and loves. I should hasten to add that it doesn’t matter if the reader has no knowledge of or interest in these classics, that I hope the novels stand on their own. As always, I want the reader to be drawn in by both the characters and the story.
What is your writing process?
Pretty dull, actually. I start at 5:30 am and finish around the same time in the evening. I treat it like a job, although it is a job that I love and the one that I’ve always wanted. I don’t outline or create charts; I just sit down and type until the good ideas come. Some days they do, some days they don’t. I also rewrite constantly, going back over chapters to see if I used the best words and have written the best possible dialogue. (There are times when I’m doing public readings where I realize that I haven’t, and make revisions on the fly.)
What advice would you give to aspiring thriller writers?
Write. That sounds glib and I don’t mean it to. But writers write. They don’t talk about it, or sit in a coffee shop and think about it, they sit down and write. I also would tell them to do the do-able, not to set unrealistic goals for themselves and then get frustrated. When I was aspiring to do this thing, I committed to write five pages a day no matter what and managed to stick to that. But if you write even one page a day, in a year or so you have a book. Also, read. Read the good stuff in our genre.
What is your favourite thriller and why?
I’m always reluctant to answer this question because there are so many great thrillers out there. But if I absolutely, positively had to choose one, it would be The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins. (Also a great film, by the way, directed by Peter Yates and starring Robert Mitchum.) Why? Well, Higgins was just a great writer – the narrative prose and dialogue are vivid – and it is the most realistic, gritty mob novel ever.
Our thanks to Don for answering our questions! The 2025 Daggers winners will be announced on 3 July. Find out more about past winners of the Steel Dagger on the CWA site here, and learn more about the rest of the Daggers and shortlists here.