Don Winslow's third book, after The Death & Life of Bobby Z and California Fire & Life, moves him resoundingly into the realm of writers like Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, George Pelecanos, writers who practice their craft within the strictures of a certain genre but who through their artistry soar above the genre. Don't get me wrong--I'm no snob; I love genre fiction, go for weeks at a time reading it exclusively. I revel in it, I appreciate it for what it is, and sometimes I mainline it, like a drug. All of this makes me appreciate it even more when someone like Winslow takes it to the next level.

The Power of the Dog is a novel about the rise of the Mexican drug trade, from the seventies up to the present day. It is as much driven by character as it is driven by action--but believe me, there's no shortage of action. We watch as the American DEA in its early years unwittingly lays the groundwork for a thriving Mexican drug underworld. Mexico is divided up into three main areas, each run by its own crime boss, all of whom are ruled by an American-style entrepreneur, schooled in the ways of American big business, running his crime world like a corporation. It's a chilling world in which the logical conclusion of any given business or personal transaction is the one which yields the most money or power, even if that road runs red with the blood of family and friends, as well as the blood of enemies.

The Power of the Dog is a book that will haunt you for days afterward, both by the power of the story told and the beauty of the words used to tell it. ( )

Lots of gore and action, kept me hooked in all the way ( )

This tangled set of interlocking stories examines the connections among money, drugs, and political power that makes the War on Drugs a much larger theatre of war than it might appear. We follow several characters from the 1970s into the 90s: a DEA agent who gets a friend killed and in a fit of remorse goes after the drug lords responsible, setting off unintended consequences; an Irish hitman from Hell's Kitchen who gets involved in an alliance with the Italian Mafia and, through them,covert operations run for the US government in Central America; a Sinaloan drug lord who has something of a conscience, but who is unable to do anything but sow destruction; a young, top-dollar call girl who crosses all of their paths sooner or later; and the one truly good person in the book - an activist bishop who doesn't quit smoking because he knows he'll be assassinated before long. Crossing the porous border between Mexico and the US, and the even more porous border between organized crime, drugs, and US foreign policy, this story is brutally violent. Though the carnage becomes numbing after a while I'm sure that's intentional - it's not gratuitous, it's filling in the blanks in the news accounts. Winslow is as angry here as John LeCarre in ABSOLUTE FRIENDS, and like that novel this book has its didactic moments. It's audacious and complex and deepens as it goes along, coming together in the end with a double-barreled climax. This is one of those books that some readers will find daunting for its length, its complexity, its violence, and its impassioned politics. But I thought it was stunning. This book will be on my "best of the year" list. ( )

A great tale of the movement of drugs through geography and time and the intertwining of the forces of law and disorder. Almost beating Ellroy as a master weaver of fact and fiction in crime. ( )

The war on (please insert horrible thing to be fought against here) the U.S. are fighting is - big surprise - a war that won't work, a war that won't be won, a useless war because it tackles symptoms rather than root causes and allies itself with evil to try to win.
See - well see all sorts of things if you watch the news.
This book is about the useless and at times hilarious war on drugs. Three lives are followed over a time period of 30 years. There's a DEA agent who yet has to find out how futile it all is, there's a high-class prostitute with more moral fibre and courage (not to mention intelligence) than 90% of our politicians world wide, there's a killer caught in the organized crime scene as a teenager and now there's no way out, no way back to 'normal'.
Good, gripping read. ( )