ISLE OF JOY Is a Great Early Novel from Don Winslow

Isle of Joy is an early novel (1996) from Don Winslow. The protagonist is Walter Withers, a CIA agent who has spent a career in Europe doing the agency's dirty work, principally trapping unsuspecting people in sexually compromising activities and then blackmailing them to spy for America. As the book opens in late 1958, Withers has returned home to New York, which he regards as the greatest city in the world. Walter loves New York, and he also loves his girlfriend, Anne Blanchard, a local jazz singer.

Walter is now working in the Personnel Security Department of a detective agency. His job is to do background checks for companies on people that they are thinking of hiring or promoting. But during the holiday season that year, he is assigned to work security for a United States senator named Joseph Keneally and his wife Madeleine. Keneally aspires to be the Democratic nominee for president in 1960 and the couple is in town for a series of holiday parties.

The Keneallys are obviously intended to be stand-ins for John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie, and Walter's assignment will prove to be a delicate one, particularly because he is expected to stand in as the "date" for Keneally's girlfriend, a stunningly sexy blonde actress. But when the girlfriend winds up dead, all hell breaks loose and Withers finds himself in the middle of a major scandal.

This is a fun read, principally because Walter Withers is such a great character to hang out with. The book is also a major love note to the city of New York at a time when the city might have been at its prime, and reading it you find yourself wishing that you could have spent a night out on the town with Walter back during that era.

To say that this is not among the greatest of Winslow's books is no slight against Isle of Joy, but rather acknowledges the brilliance of much of his later work like The Winter of Frankie Machine, The Power of the Dog, The Force, and others. Fans of the author will certainly want to seek out this book.