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Run by Douglas E. Winter
Penzler Pick, May 2000: This first novel reads like an adrenaline rush. From the first page, the reader will inhale this story of a gun run from Washington, D.C., to New York, exhaling 288 pages later. Burdon Lane is not a man to admire. He makes his living transporting guns into those areas of the city where the authorities turn a blind eye to residents shooting each other with some regularity. The purpose of his latest run to Harlem is to arm one gang against another. What Burdon does not know is that the government has a man, maybe more than one, inside the run. What the authorities don't know is that someone has a plan of his own. Just as the deal is about to go down, Lane's own people start shooting each other, the gun merchants begin killing their own, and men in police uniforms who are obviously not police show up. Suddenly a prominent civil rights leader marching in a parade nearby is assassinated. When all the shooting stops, Lane finds himself in possession of $2 million intended for the purchase of the guns. He has no idea what has just happened. All he knows is that he must run. This, then, is the story of a run within a run, and it's one of the most original first novels to come along in a while. Winter has an extraordinary voice, but he also has an underlying message about our gun culture. It is not just about gangsters selling guns; it is about who sells, who buys, and, ultimately, who cares and who doesn't. --Otto Penzler
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First published January 1, 2000
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About the author
Douglas E. Winter
96 books55 followersDouglas E. Winter is an American writer, critic and lawyer. A life-long interest in horror has led him to develop a parallel career as horror writer and horror critic. Winter edited horror anthologies Prime Evil (1988), and Revelations (1997) as well as the interviews collection Faces of Fear (1985, revised 1990). He has also written biographies of Stephen King and Clive Barker. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
July 15, 2016
Burdon Lane works for a legal gun dealer who also dabbles in some illcit side deals. When a gun deal goes south and a political figure winds up assassinated, Burdon's friends turn on him and he goes on the run. But who can he trust?
During our third booze-soaked meeting, Kemper gave me two books: Seveneves and this one.
The book started slow. The first 35% was setup, introducing all the players and getting them into position. The remaining 65% was an orgy of violence and betrayal.
Run could have easily been a no-brain thriller but raises a lot of questions on race, identity, and gun violence. Burdon Lane struggles with who he is over the course of the novel. His feelings over the deaths and betrayals set him apart from other anti-heroes, making him more than the Parker ripoff I thought he might wind up being.
While Douglas E. Winter writes great action, the relationship between Burdon and Jinx was my favorite part of the book. Jinx could have easily been a stereotype gang member but wound up being one of the better written characters in the tale.
The never-ending betrayals and brutal violence wore on me after a while. Still, I loved the showdown at the end. The aftermath was a little soft, though.
That's about all I have to say. Run is better experienced than read about anyway. 3.5 out of 5 stars.
During our third booze-soaked meeting, Kemper gave me two books: Seveneves and this one.
The book started slow. The first 35% was setup, introducing all the players and getting them into position. The remaining 65% was an orgy of violence and betrayal.
Run could have easily been a no-brain thriller but raises a lot of questions on race, identity, and gun violence. Burdon Lane struggles with who he is over the course of the novel. His feelings over the deaths and betrayals set him apart from other anti-heroes, making him more than the Parker ripoff I thought he might wind up being.
While Douglas E. Winter writes great action, the relationship between Burdon and Jinx was my favorite part of the book. Jinx could have easily been a stereotype gang member but wound up being one of the better written characters in the tale.
The never-ending betrayals and brutal violence wore on me after a while. Still, I loved the showdown at the end. The aftermath was a little soft, though.
That's about all I have to say. Run is better experienced than read about anyway. 3.5 out of 5 stars.
July 11, 2016
This is the book so nice I bought it twice.
Well, actually it’s a pretty violent and dark story so it’s not all that nice. And the reason I ended up with two copies is that I’d bought it when it first came out in those bygone days before the world moved on when I’d browse the tables and shelves of the nearest Border’s and might just take home something with a snazzy cover that looked fun. Years later after I had moved a couple of times and sold or donated a lot of my old books another copy caught my eye in a used book store which gave me an urge to reread it. Thinking that I had gotten rid of the first one I bought it. Later I found my first copy packed away so I now had two, and yet still didn’t manage to read it again as more time passed. Dan coming to town gave me an opportunity to unload the extra one and finally check it out again with a buddy read as motivation.
Burdon Lane is gun dealer who usually doesn’t leave the house without at least a couple of pistols on him. Officially his business is legal, but unofficially he does all kinds of off-the-books and under-the-table sales on behalf of the arms broker he works for. The boss sends him along on a large deal to a street gang, and Burdon reluctantly goes even though the whole thing seems fishy. Things go sideways in a spectacle of violence and murder that leaves Burdon on the run with a gangbanger he just met.
This is a pretty well written thriller with a lot of action, but it’s far from flawless. It was published in 2000, and it really has that post-Pulp Fiction late-‘90s crime fiction style of trying to make the criminals cool even if they’re doing and saying things that make that genuinely awful people. At the start of the book Burdon is a thug, a killer, and a guy who will unironically bitch about how much the guvment is infringing on the gun rights of Americans even as he’s selling assault weapons to anyone who can pull a trigger. He’s also the kind of person who is comfortable using casual racist slurs. Fortunately, there’s an arc to the character that has him coming to some self-awareness and realizations at the end so this isn’t a case of just having an unlikable anti-hero throughout the book.
I think it might have been more interesting if the plot had actually been more centered around the gun dealing rather than dropping Burdon in the middle of a fairly standard conspiracy thriller. It takes a bit too long to really get going for a book of this type, but the pace is pretty decent once things start happening. It also drew the ending out for far too long while having a contradictory tone in which violence isn’t the answer at one moment, but in the next minute Burdon is being a cool bad-ass who is shooting up countless bad guys.
Overall, it’s a pretty good action thriller, but it wasn’t worth buying two copies.
Well, actually it’s a pretty violent and dark story so it’s not all that nice. And the reason I ended up with two copies is that I’d bought it when it first came out in those bygone days before the world moved on when I’d browse the tables and shelves of the nearest Border’s and might just take home something with a snazzy cover that looked fun. Years later after I had moved a couple of times and sold or donated a lot of my old books another copy caught my eye in a used book store which gave me an urge to reread it. Thinking that I had gotten rid of the first one I bought it. Later I found my first copy packed away so I now had two, and yet still didn’t manage to read it again as more time passed. Dan coming to town gave me an opportunity to unload the extra one and finally check it out again with a buddy read as motivation.
Burdon Lane is gun dealer who usually doesn’t leave the house without at least a couple of pistols on him. Officially his business is legal, but unofficially he does all kinds of off-the-books and under-the-table sales on behalf of the arms broker he works for. The boss sends him along on a large deal to a street gang, and Burdon reluctantly goes even though the whole thing seems fishy. Things go sideways in a spectacle of violence and murder that leaves Burdon on the run with a gangbanger he just met.
This is a pretty well written thriller with a lot of action, but it’s far from flawless. It was published in 2000, and it really has that post-Pulp Fiction late-‘90s crime fiction style of trying to make the criminals cool even if they’re doing and saying things that make that genuinely awful people. At the start of the book Burdon is a thug, a killer, and a guy who will unironically bitch about how much the guvment is infringing on the gun rights of Americans even as he’s selling assault weapons to anyone who can pull a trigger. He’s also the kind of person who is comfortable using casual racist slurs. Fortunately, there’s an arc to the character that has him coming to some self-awareness and realizations at the end so this isn’t a case of just having an unlikable anti-hero throughout the book.
I think it might have been more interesting if the plot had actually been more centered around the gun dealing rather than dropping Burdon in the middle of a fairly standard conspiracy thriller. It takes a bit too long to really get going for a book of this type, but the pace is pretty decent once things start happening. It also drew the ending out for far too long while having a contradictory tone in which violence isn’t the answer at one moment, but in the next minute Burdon is being a cool bad-ass who is shooting up countless bad guys.
Overall, it’s a pretty good action thriller, but it wasn’t worth buying two copies.
September 13, 2007
Douglas Winter writes with great style. This book has a hard boiled noir feel, but it's a new, faster breed. Some of the most propulsive fiction I've read. I remember a paragraph where the criminal protagonist looks lovingly over his collection of guns that read like free form poetry. Very cool.
It ain't deep, but it is tough as hell. Since it all takes place in New York and DC and on the Amtrak train that runs between the cities, I knew the settings intimately, which added to the excitement as considerable mayhem ensued.
Worth reading for the effective style, and the tight plotting.
It ain't deep, but it is tough as hell. Since it all takes place in New York and DC and on the Amtrak train that runs between the cities, I knew the settings intimately, which added to the excitement as considerable mayhem ensued.
Worth reading for the effective style, and the tight plotting.
January 24, 2008
Douglas E. Winter, Run (Onyx, 2000)
Douglas Winter, whose sole excursion into publishing previously was editing a number of excellent anthologies, heads to the front of the camera, as it were, with his first novel, Run. One wonders, idly, what took him so long-especially after reading this.
Burdon Lane is an arms dealer-mostly legal, with some grey-area stuff around the edges to supplement the income. All of it is well-known and well-sanctioned by his employer, UniArms, who do the same thing, just on a much bigger level. One day, the president of UniArms calls Burdon and his sidekick, Renny Two-Hand, into the office and asks them to accompany a shipment to Manhattan. It should be an easy job, but if it were, there wouldn't be a novel, would there?
Most reviews, and all the blurbs, focus on the book's fast pace and nonstop action. Which is true, for the last two hundred or so pages of this four-hundred-page novel. Once the deal goes sour, you'll finish this in one marathon session. Winter provides no place to take smoke breaks in here; the shooting starts, and it does not end. It's not every action-novel writer who can keep up that kind of a pace for two hundred pages.
What impressed me more about the novel, though, were the first two hundred pages, which involve a lot of waiting, a lot of background, and some nicely unobtrusive setup for the events to come. I can't count the number of action, mystery, horror, et al. novels where the setup portions drag like a three-toed sloth with a gimp leg. But even when Winter is setting up Burdon's character, introducing us to the minor players, and other such mundane tasks, the book is still brisk enough that the reader is reluctant to let go. This comes half from Burdon Lane's narrative style, which has the look and feel of an illiterate construction worker reciting the famous soliloquy from Hamlet, and half from an ability to flesh out minor characters with little details most writers would overlook. (The comparison here to one of Winter's longtime clients, Stephen King, is obvious. The man learned from the master of the quirky detail and the two-line character sketch. He learned very well. This is not to say that this sounds in any way like a Stephen King novel; Winter has a voice all his own, and it's a doozy.) Someone needs to make a movie of this book, if only to give Steve Buscemi the chance to play CK, one of the other guys accompanying the shipment.
I hate to use phrases like "adrenaline-fueled," but this book deserves them all. All-natural guarana-enhanced sport drinks have nothing on Doug Winter's writing style. ****
Douglas Winter, whose sole excursion into publishing previously was editing a number of excellent anthologies, heads to the front of the camera, as it were, with his first novel, Run. One wonders, idly, what took him so long-especially after reading this.
Burdon Lane is an arms dealer-mostly legal, with some grey-area stuff around the edges to supplement the income. All of it is well-known and well-sanctioned by his employer, UniArms, who do the same thing, just on a much bigger level. One day, the president of UniArms calls Burdon and his sidekick, Renny Two-Hand, into the office and asks them to accompany a shipment to Manhattan. It should be an easy job, but if it were, there wouldn't be a novel, would there?
Most reviews, and all the blurbs, focus on the book's fast pace and nonstop action. Which is true, for the last two hundred or so pages of this four-hundred-page novel. Once the deal goes sour, you'll finish this in one marathon session. Winter provides no place to take smoke breaks in here; the shooting starts, and it does not end. It's not every action-novel writer who can keep up that kind of a pace for two hundred pages.
What impressed me more about the novel, though, were the first two hundred pages, which involve a lot of waiting, a lot of background, and some nicely unobtrusive setup for the events to come. I can't count the number of action, mystery, horror, et al. novels where the setup portions drag like a three-toed sloth with a gimp leg. But even when Winter is setting up Burdon's character, introducing us to the minor players, and other such mundane tasks, the book is still brisk enough that the reader is reluctant to let go. This comes half from Burdon Lane's narrative style, which has the look and feel of an illiterate construction worker reciting the famous soliloquy from Hamlet, and half from an ability to flesh out minor characters with little details most writers would overlook. (The comparison here to one of Winter's longtime clients, Stephen King, is obvious. The man learned from the master of the quirky detail and the two-line character sketch. He learned very well. This is not to say that this sounds in any way like a Stephen King novel; Winter has a voice all his own, and it's a doozy.) Someone needs to make a movie of this book, if only to give Steve Buscemi the chance to play CK, one of the other guys accompanying the shipment.
I hate to use phrases like "adrenaline-fueled," but this book deserves them all. All-natural guarana-enhanced sport drinks have nothing on Doug Winter's writing style. ****
April 28, 2009
This is one of the best cheap (40 cent) paperbacks I ever read. Action packed, takes you on a road. I don't know why it was so unpopular. Maybe it was the N word or something.
November 13, 2007
This was a real sleeper and surprise. Constant action and quick read. Dialogue is fun and he knows his guns. Didn't figure it from his background blurb. Buy it and read it.
March 20, 2009
This is one of the best books I've read in a long time. Lots of guns and great characters. I want to cast the movie.
June 29, 2009
this book grabs you and doesn't let go, Fast paced as it gets. I WISH I CAN FIND MORE BY HIM.
July 6, 2009
Have you ever watched French Connection LOUD and on a BIG TV, and you seen the part where the car narrowly escapes hitting the lady with the baby carriage and you literally leaned to one side as if your efforts would allow the drive that extra little nudge as to avoid IMPENDING DOOM?
That's what it is like to read this novel.
That plus a lot of people shooting each other and REALLY VIVID descriptions of guns.
That's what it is like to read this novel.
That plus a lot of people shooting each other and REALLY VIVID descriptions of guns.
January 1, 2009
Violent, improbable... but completely enjoyable from start to finish.
March 30, 2023
I'm surprised not many people are talking about this book. But this seriously reads like a mix between Max Payne, Collateral, Reservoir Dogs, and an old school mob movie.
Amongst many other things I liked about this novel, the most remarkable aspect I gotta mention first is the voice of the narrator. Hands down, Burdon Lane is one of the best protagonists in all of crime fiction in my opinion. Let alone all the colorful and memorable side characters, from CK, Two Hand, Jinx, and even a nifty computer wiz nicknamed after a certain Star Wars character I won't mention for spoiler's sake.
I gotta compliment too how well the action scenes are in this novel. They're grizzly, nail bitting, and it makes me feel like I'm watching a violent, and foul mouthed movie my mother wouldn't want me watching past my bedtime. Because I must admit, I've seen LOTS of other "action packed" stories where the fighting was dull, with the characters themselves being even more dull (DNF'd titles who shall not be named). So I'm happy to say there's none of those faults in Run!
The world itself is endlessly interesting, with the dialogue between characters making me laugh on every joke which feels so genuine and natural. I always go wide-eyed on the twists, and I constantly find myself wanting to know more and more about the people on the page.
Thank you so much Douglas E Winter for this treasure of a book! 🙏 Stay loose my friend 🤘
Amongst many other things I liked about this novel, the most remarkable aspect I gotta mention first is the voice of the narrator. Hands down, Burdon Lane is one of the best protagonists in all of crime fiction in my opinion. Let alone all the colorful and memorable side characters, from CK, Two Hand, Jinx, and even a nifty computer wiz nicknamed after a certain Star Wars character I won't mention for spoiler's sake.
I gotta compliment too how well the action scenes are in this novel. They're grizzly, nail bitting, and it makes me feel like I'm watching a violent, and foul mouthed movie my mother wouldn't want me watching past my bedtime. Because I must admit, I've seen LOTS of other "action packed" stories where the fighting was dull, with the characters themselves being even more dull (DNF'd titles who shall not be named). So I'm happy to say there's none of those faults in Run!
The world itself is endlessly interesting, with the dialogue between characters making me laugh on every joke which feels so genuine and natural. I always go wide-eyed on the twists, and I constantly find myself wanting to know more and more about the people on the page.
Thank you so much Douglas E Winter for this treasure of a book! 🙏 Stay loose my friend 🤘
November 9, 2020
It's a bit ammosexual, and in that way trying to appeal to an audience ie Stephen Hunter. Lee Child etc etc and a bit derivative but it is the author's voice and command of language that sets it apart. This is a person in love with language who put a lot of heart and talent into Run. Yeah it breaks the believability barrier but just go with it, it's a cut above many similar outings.
December 11, 2023
Wow! What a kick-ass first novel!!
Written in a down-and-dirty way just like the nature of the environment he writes about. Colorful language abounds in this tale of present-day corporate gunrunners and a deal that goes way the hell off the rails.
I know Mr. Winter's primary genre is Horror, but boy do I want more of this!
Don't delay in picking this up, you'll never put it down!
Written in a down-and-dirty way just like the nature of the environment he writes about. Colorful language abounds in this tale of present-day corporate gunrunners and a deal that goes way the hell off the rails.
I know Mr. Winter's primary genre is Horror, but boy do I want more of this!
Don't delay in picking this up, you'll never put it down!
September 8, 2023
I wouldn't normally want to read a book about guns. But it turns out this is so much more. It was very difficult to understand what was happening and who was talking in the beginning. Once I got used to it, though, I enjoyed the challenge.
January 9, 2018
Wow! Best hard-boiled crime I've read in ages!
Read
November 10, 2019good
January 7, 2020
Not my usual type read but, good fast paced with interesting ending.
October 31, 2021
Read in 2000. Riveting story about a guy who sells guns on the black market.
February 15, 2023
Thrilling, chilling, blood spilling.
January 31, 2025
Great action / page turner
October 17, 2024
I loved this book. Absolutely non-stop gloriousness. One of the most propulsive, forward momentum books I’ve read. It’s violent, gun-obsessed and there’s an awful lot of testosterone. There are no good guys at all, and ‘guys’ includes men and women. Zero moral compass, no learning, no (ish) redemption. The plot doesn’t always quite make sense when you stop think about it, but the overall direction works perfectly well and carries you along grippingly. It's kind of second cousin to Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, a massive compliment, but with an even higher body count. The final chapter is marginally flawed but that doesn’t really matter.
Oh, and Douglas E Winter, who has only ever written this one novel (I think he wrote some fantasy and horror short stories), is a pretty good writer.
This is so not for everyone but it was for me. I wish he’d written more crime.
Oh, and Douglas E Winter, who has only ever written this one novel (I think he wrote some fantasy and horror short stories), is a pretty good writer.
This is so not for everyone but it was for me. I wish he’d written more crime.
December 11, 2007
This book kicked me in the chest and knocked me down. Winter (a long-time editor of various horror anthologies and, I think, a DC area lawyer or some such) writes the sordid , blood and cordite-streaked 1st person narrative of a weapons merchant caught between a rock and some hardcases with a fluid intensity that keeps the action moving virtually nonstop.
Burden Lane is probably not your average antihero, but he's familiar enough. He isn't a bad-bad man, he doesn't shoot nuns or rape dogs, but he does sell guns to people that the law says shouldn't have guns. Lots of guns. Machine guns, grenade launchers, sniper rifles and handguns: oh, so many handguns. Burden Lane works for a pretty tight operation of ex-military and other shadowy black ops types, and they make sure that the people who are willing to pay for guns get them.
Then, on a sale, things go wrong and loyalty is called into question and the bullets start flying and yeah, the finale feels a little warped in it's small/huge scale and yeah, the lack of quotation marks can be a little irritating at first and yeah, maybe it is just gun porn with a social conscience but it kicks ass. And personally, I like a little social science and humanism injected into my kickass action.
I keep waiting for Winter to write another novel. And waiting.
Burden Lane is probably not your average antihero, but he's familiar enough. He isn't a bad-bad man, he doesn't shoot nuns or rape dogs, but he does sell guns to people that the law says shouldn't have guns. Lots of guns. Machine guns, grenade launchers, sniper rifles and handguns: oh, so many handguns. Burden Lane works for a pretty tight operation of ex-military and other shadowy black ops types, and they make sure that the people who are willing to pay for guns get them.
Then, on a sale, things go wrong and loyalty is called into question and the bullets start flying and yeah, the finale feels a little warped in it's small/huge scale and yeah, the lack of quotation marks can be a little irritating at first and yeah, maybe it is just gun porn with a social conscience but it kicks ass. And personally, I like a little social science and humanism injected into my kickass action.
I keep waiting for Winter to write another novel. And waiting.
April 12, 2012
Story:
Burdon Lane seems to be your average ordinary guy. The type of guy that goes about his life and no one takes notice of him, but Burdon Lane wants it that way. See Burdon is a gun runner and a good one at that. A potential big score goes south though and Burdon finds himself running for his life and everyone is after him.
Thoughts:
I had a lot of time to kill waiting on flights and such, so picked this book up on a whim from a stack of books sitting in a MWR room. I was not disappointed. The first third of the book is kind of slow, but it’s interesting. Once everything gets moving though it moves and the last third of the book is full of action. Kind of surprised this hasn’t been rewritten for a movie, though it would probably be a bit too violent.
Should you read it?
Sure, it’s a fun violent romp around the underworld, full of crosses and double crosses. Just be ready for a lot of harsh language.
Burdon Lane seems to be your average ordinary guy. The type of guy that goes about his life and no one takes notice of him, but Burdon Lane wants it that way. See Burdon is a gun runner and a good one at that. A potential big score goes south though and Burdon finds himself running for his life and everyone is after him.
Thoughts:
I had a lot of time to kill waiting on flights and such, so picked this book up on a whim from a stack of books sitting in a MWR room. I was not disappointed. The first third of the book is kind of slow, but it’s interesting. Once everything gets moving though it moves and the last third of the book is full of action. Kind of surprised this hasn’t been rewritten for a movie, though it would probably be a bit too violent.
Should you read it?
Sure, it’s a fun violent romp around the underworld, full of crosses and double crosses. Just be ready for a lot of harsh language.
June 27, 2012
I have read this book multiple tymes. I used to read it about once a year. I have to say that it is meant to be a nonstop action book based on the way it was written and I feel like it is. There are small character developments, but for the most part you just get the main guy and his outlook. I would love to see this made into a movie. Small disclaimer this book lacks alot of proper punctuation. It was the fast paced style the author was going for. I have read to many reviews that were turned off by it. This is a nonstop action book so who needs a ton of commas and periods? I loved the way he just goes with it and never stops running...
August 10, 2008
Riviting story about a guy who sells guns on the black market. He winds up in New York on a guns for money exchange with two gangs. Everything goes bad when a prominate anti-violence figure is assinated. He has to make his way back to Washington DC with the help of one of the gang members. Probably one of the most action filled, page turners I have read in some time. Different stuff happening throughout the book. Well written and very entertaining.
November 9, 2008
A few years ago Brian was reading this book and when he finished it he told me I ought to give it a try. I definitely enjoyed it. The main thing I remember about the book was that the author did a really good job of capturing Alexandria, VA in a crime-novel setting. I might have just liked it because a lot of the locations were familiar. In any event, if you're from Alexandria and like crime novels, it's worth reading.
October 6, 2010
Read this one a long time ago...there's as many bullets as there are pages in the book, but it's surprisingly decent. The pace is fast and frenetic, the plot decent, but the character development was lacking. Decent book, not great.
June 24, 2012
At the start of this thriller, featuring a gun runner sent on what should be a milk run, I really enjoyed the author's voice and the frantic action. The middle bogged down though and, by the end, my suspension of disbelief had run its course.
March 4, 2017
Just a great read. One of the best modern crime novels out there.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews