What’s Wrong With Violent Fiction?

“How do we ethically portray violence in crime fiction?” asked veteran author Don Winslow in TIME magazine in April 2022. If anyone should know the answer it’s Winslow, who has written his fair share of crime novels. And yet the conclusion he reaches, after nearly 1,500 meandering words, is that he doesn’t and cannot know. Far from establishing guideposts for fellow writers or discovering the ethical sweet spot between bloodless cosy mysteries and graphic accounts of bodies ripped apart by gunfire, the writing of this piece accomplishes one thing and one thing only: it demonstrates to the world that Don Winslow Has Really Thought About This.