Don Winslow's City on Fire is a violent crime thriller you won't be able to put down

He will instead devote his time to launching digital campaigns supporting Democratic causes and opposing what he called "Trumpism".

"Donald Trump was defeated in 2020," he wrote in a statement announcing his retirement. "But Trumpism is a cancer that has metastised across the country ... don't underestimate this all-out attack on our democracy ... we need more than outrage ... we need action."

In the lead-up to the election Winslow collaborated with high-profile people such as musician Bruce Springsteen and actor Jeff Daniels to make political videos which have been viewed more than 250 million times. His YouTube channel is his platform now.

"I feel we're at a crisis point in American democracy," Winslow tells me. It's early morning Rhode Island time, already he's full of passion and vigour for this new cause.

"This is a guy who tried to overthrow the democratically elected government of the United States and now he seems to be back ... I think I need to be in that fight."

If you're going to go out, you may as well do it on a trilogy based on The Iliad. City on Fire, and the books to come, retells the story against a backdrop of warring gangs in Rhode Island in the 1980s.

"The formula comes from The Iliad, you talk about stories eternal, it's one of the oldest stories ever written down," Winslow says.

"There was a real-life incident where a war between two syndicates started over a woman at a beach party, we're going back 20 years, but it struck me at the time as being a real Helen of Troy incident.

"Just like Troy, the woman was at the centre, but the real reasons were what they've always been: power, money, sex, revenge."

City on Fire follows Irishman Danny Ryan, who's caught between a violent life and wanting to live with a moral code. He's torn by his loyalty to his family and wanting to break clear and start afresh.

When a mysterious woman arrives she drives a wedge between the Irish and the Italians who are already at odds with each other.

"Danny Ryan watches the woman come out of the water like a vision emerging from the dreams of the sea," the book opens.

"Except she's real and she's going to be trouble.

"Women that beautiful usually are.

"Danny knows that; what he doesn't know is just how much trouble she's really going to be. If he knew what, knew everything that was going to happen, he might have walked into the water and held her head under until she stopped moving.

"But he doesn't know that."

Winslow says he wrote this opening 27 years ago and tucked it away. Helen of Troy hidden away just waiting for the right story.

City on Fire is a cracker read; it's confronting, full of bigoted, racist, misogynistic characters who you despise but can't help loving at the same time.

It's violent too. Winslow wrote a piece for Time magazine about the complicated ethics of violence in fiction.

"I wrestle with this issue all the time," he wrote, admitting he didn't want to sanitise violence nor cross that thin line "into what might be called the pornography of violence, a means to merely titillate the worst angels of our nature."

But crime fiction is about crime and crime often involves violence. He aims for realism every time he writes a novel.

"I've always wanted to write fiction, this is my 22nd attempt at it," he says.

"It's always fun, as our conversation began, to take these ancient stories and make them contemporary, finding those analogies and parallels is always a lot of fun."

His first book, A Cool Breeze on the Underground, was written in 1991, while he was travelling and working as a private investigator.

In 2005 he published the first of the books in the Cartel trilogy, The Power of the Dog, followed by The Cartel in 2015 and The Border in 2019.

The series, which spans 45 years, follows a DEA agent in America's long-running war on drugs.

It's been described as "a hybrid of The Godfather and War and Peace". This series is in development as a television series with the FX Network. Ridley Scott will serve as an executive producer.

The City on Fire trilogy has also been optioned for a film.

The next two books will follow Danny Ryan as he leaves Rhode Island and heads west to Hollywood and eventually Las Vegas.

"The next book actually starts 20 minutes after this first one ends," Winslow says.

"Hollywood is the land of dreams, a place where people go to reinvent themselves, but he won't escape all his problems."

WInslow has always been fascinated by organised crime. He grew up in Rhode Island where the Irish and the Italians were always at odds.

"The Mafia were a power, they were always around, you were aware of them," he says.

What is it about groups such as the Mafia that fascinates us from the outside?

From The Godfather trilogy released in 1972, to Goodfellas (1990), The Departed (2006) and The Irishman (2019), why are we drawn to groups who, ostensibly, are up to no good?

"I think it's a power fantasy," he says.

"The vast majority of us are pretty law-abiding but we have our frustrations and they get complicated.

"In these mafia stories, you go see Marlon Brando and he takes care of it, you cut through all the red tape. Somebody goes and talks to that noisy neighbour and shuts them up.

"You might have a more serious sort of legal injustice and you don't get satisfaction in the legal system and so the fantasy is you go outside of it and have it taken care of directly.

"I've thought a lot about this, I have various theories, but that's the one I think is probably the most persuasive.

"A lot of us have felt powerless and vulnerable and anxious over the past few years, with this insane administration, COVID, with what's happening now in the Ukraine, people seek that escape, like to seek people taking action."

Which is exactly what Winslow himself is planning to do.