BY OLINE H. COGDILL

Sun Sentinel

THE KINGS OF COOL

By Don Winslow

Simon & Schuster

320 pages, $25

Don Winslow’s brash 2010 novel “Savages” finally moved this talented author from a cult-like status to the mainstream. Winslow’s 13th novel featured an action-packed plot loaded with fringe characters, brutality and gallows humor that neither glorified nor judged the California drug trade. Each multi-dimensional character was both a hero and a villain.

Then there was Winslow’s unconventional, sparse prose with some chapters consisting of only a couple of words, a couple of sentences running vertically down the page and occasional paragraphs resembling haiku or written as a script. In the hands of a lesser talent, this approach would be irritating, but Winslow made it work.

With director Oliver Stone’s film version of “Savages” now in theatres, Winslow returns to his three main characters — independent marijuana millionaires Ben and Chon and their mutual girlfriend Ophelia. But instead of a sequel, Winslow’s “The Kings of Cool” offers a prequel, delving into the threesome’s eccentric family history, showing how they settled into a happy, almost normal, ménage à trois.

“The Kings of Cool” smoothly moves from 2005, when Ben, Chon and O, as she prefers to be called, were just settling in, then back to 1967, their parents’ time, when several independent, nonviolent drug dealers were setting up a business called the Association. “The Kings of Cool” also highlights the Association’s activities through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

“The past isn’t the past,” Winslow writes. “It’s always with us. In our history. Our minds, our blood.”

Family history plays an important part in “The Kings of Cool” from Chon’s fractious relationship with his father, John McAlister, a roofer turned drug kingpin, to Ben’s parents, Stan and Diane Leonard, former bookstore owners turned psychotherapists.

Winslow also shows the personal history of Ophelia’s much-married mother and Ophelia’s obsessive search for her father. “The Kings of Cool” also chronicles how Elena Sanchez changed from devoted mother and wife to a ruthless leader of a drug cartel, recruiting former cop Lado as her henchman. And upstanding DEA agent Dennis Cain is seduced to the dark side by a home improvement project and the thrill of granite counters.

As in “Savages,” Winslow pushes the boundaries of prose in “The Kings of Cool,” supplementing a conventional story with haiku-like paragraphs, the occasional script and a stream of consciousness approach.

Winslow has always been an inventive writer, and a prime of example of his talents is “California Fire and Life,” published in 1999.

“The Kings of Cool” reinforces just how cool Winslow is.