The Cartel, the blockbuster sequel to The Power of the Dog, is also available. It will leave you stunned, but also sickened by the dark side of American democracy. In a brutal world filled with striking characters, from a high class prostitute to an Irish hitman and a charismatic Catholic priest, everyone is in search of some kind of salvation - or damnation.ĭon Winslow's masterpiece is not only a page-turning thriller but also a rich and compelling novel in the league of James Ellroy or Don DeLillo. The Power of the Dog is the best crime novel about the Western Hemispheres drug trade I have read in many years. His nephew, Adan Barrera, is his worthy successor.Īrt Keller is a US government operative, so determined to obtain revenge for a murdered colleague that his pursuit of the cartel veers dangerously towards an obsession outside the law. Superb' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAYĪ brilliant page-turning thriller of power and revenge on the front lines of the drug war.ĭrug lord Miguel Angel Barrera is head of the Mexican drug federación, responsible for millions of dollars worth of cocaine traffic into the US and the torture and murder of those who stand in its way.

should have a place on every crime freak's bookshelf. Author tour.'Winslow's masterpiece (so far). A complex plot, well-drawn characters and plenty of double-crossing make this a thinking person's narco-thriller. Winslow's depth of research and unflagging attention to detail give the story both heft and immediacy, and his staccato, present-tense prose shifts easily among wildly disparate settings and multiple points of view.

and Mexico governments, to a final showdown on the U.S.

Winslow follows these four characters and assorted extras as they cross paths over three decades in the international drug trade, from Keller's first encounter with Barrera in 1970s Mexico, through the drug cartels' corruption of government officials in the U.S. And Sean Callan is a taciturn mob hit man, a stone-cold killer who just wants out of the life. Nora Hayden is a high-class call girl whose heart is in the right place. The seemingly disparate lives of a DEA agent, a drug lord, a call girl, a hit man, and a priest intertwine around a nexus of the drug trade involving the Latin American drug cartels, the American underworld, and the U.S. Adan Barrera is an urbane drug dealer whose charm masks his brutality. Art Keller is a brilliant DEA agent who sometimes breaks the rules to serve justice.

The war on drugs is powerfully dramatized in Winslow's ambitious, dense and gritty latest (after 1999's California Fire and Life

The power of the dog by don winslow