The Power of the Dog

Winslow is one of my all-time favorite authors. His epic three-book series about an American DEA agent and his Mexican narco-boss nemesis starts here. I was riveted through the next two books, too, but I’ve added this one to my list because of the subtle ways I learned that the politics of the DEA are so much like what I faced at the State Department. Bonus: the narrator, Ray Porter, makes a great story even better.

I am fascinated with the application of power and its intersection with business and politics.

Winslow’s expose on the Mexican drug cartels provides a real-life description of the tragedies of America’s longest war and the unexpected consequences. It is thought provoking as well as entertaining, opening up my own world to new thoughts on the realities of American intervention in South America to prevent the spread of Communism.

This is the story of the US border with Mexico and the rise of the drug trade.

It is a great story with many insights into one of my major concerns of the moment, the ongoing invasion of drugs and illegal aliens perpetrated by the cartels. All the characters are so well developed. I feel like I knew them all.

The clear-eyed depiction of politics and politicians on both sides of the border provides the foundation on which the intractability of the problem rests. No virtue signaling. The style is compelling. I can feel the anger, stress, and fear. Could… show more.

NPR put it best when they said of Don Winslow’s border trilogy, “This is all basically Shakespeare. Not Shakespearean, mind you. But Shakespeare. As in, 300 years from now, when our children’s children’s children want to understand the defining conflict of the late 20th and early 21st century—when they want it presented with full lights and fireworks, costumed in gold chains and polo shirts, writ hugely in the way that only fiction can be—there’s a fair chance that this is what they will read.”

The Power of the Dog is the first novel in Don Winslow’s border trilogy… show more.