The Cartel

Brutal, searing, epic sequel to The Power Of The Dog - though reading the latter isn't essential, as the various low points of the Keller/Barrera hategrudge are succinctly presented, and then the book gets on with the business of fictionalising the horrors of the last decade or so of the drug war. Adan Barrera swans out of prison and goes to work re-establishing his power. Art Keller is, reluctantly, sent south of the US/Mexico border to track him down. But there are more players involved in the rising cartels than just Barrera, and they are embarking on a war of their own of unprecedented savagery, infecting every level of Mexican society with fear and corruption and bloodshed.

In terms of crime fiction as social document, this is the show more literary successor to The Wire. Winslow's been impressing with his distinctive prose style and the effortless cool of hos characters and his plots, but this surpasses Ellroy in its portrayal of a society brutalised by crime. Even the ugly moral choices made by Keller as he battles his way closer to Barrera are dwarfed by the sheer scale of the evil. A dark, passionate, angry, unflinching novel, and though it leaves the reader dazed and sobered and weary, it also exhilarates as a major piece of crime literature. show less

Between 2004 and 2014, Art (Killer) Keller—an Ex-DEA agent turned special ops/vigilante—hunts for his arch-enemy, Adan Barrera, Mexico's biggest drug lord of the century. Along the way, Art witnesses the horrific destruction of Mexico as the drug narcos wage war on each other, nearly eradicating the land they love. Don Winslow is a master storyteller, and with his descriptive, blunt style, he exposes the power-hungry kingpins of the drug world for the ruthless killers they are. They crush everything in their paths for greed of power and money. These evil, soulless men snatch kids off the streets to replenish their armies, rape and murder innocent women, and violently exterminate thousands of their country's people, stopping at show more nothing to take what they want and protect their territories. Art has lost everything except his need for revenge—and when a man has nothing left to lose—there's nothing to stop him from descending into hell to catch the devil. Dedicated to the hundreds of journalists that were murdered or disappeared during this time trying to bring the truth to their countrymen, the author emphasizes the enormous damage that drugs can unleash on the world. It makes one question who are the real criminals? The narcos or the drug users that buy their products? Without them, would we have the other? show less

For newer readers to my blog, some months back I reviewed the book that precedes this one called “Power of the Dog” also by Don Winslow. I gave it an unequivocal 5 stars and this one continues the story and receives the same 5 stars. I went and bought the book new, soft cover at the book store simply because I could not get the first book out of my head and talked about it to every reader I know.

This book picks up where the last left off. Adan Barerra, the powerful leader of the drug cartel that Art Keller decimated, has managed to finagle his way out of U.S. custody back to Mexico to serve his prison time there.

In the glorious vein of Lucky Luciano and Pablo Escobar, he begins rebuilding his cartel from behind bars. This includes show more setting up his cell as a luxurious 5 star suite and having prison authorities, government authorities and cartel members all on his payroll. He also manages to establish a private army and take a jailed beauty queen/drug smuggler as his mistress after the demise of his marriage.

Adan has only one other ambition besides re-establishing his drug empire. He has a $2 million dollar bounty on the head of DEA agent Art Keller. As for Art Keller, he knows Adan will try to be the kingpin again and he wants Adan dead too. Stalemate.

Throughout the border towns the funnels are controlled by a variety of dons who have filled the vacuum since Adan’s capture. An all-out war erupts between the new dons and the old to control the means of movement of drugs through the plazas and border cities throughout the rest of North America.

This time, we are treated to some new players. A group of activist journalists and writers based in Jaurez provide a running commentary on the carnage and represent the people caught in the middle of this all out bloodbath for control of the drug trade. Pablo, Ana and Oscar are our guides in this group.

Marisol is a physician, fighting to assist the broken and damaged as well as an activist who, by raising her profile and speaking out publicly, has also put a target on her back. She also provides us with a new love interest for Art. This is a good thing because I despaired for Art’s soul and humanity at the end of the first book.

As with the first book, the stakes are high and the violence is brutal and graphic but the storytelling is exceptionally high caliber. I am going out on a limb here but in my opinion, this could well be the next “Godfather”. It is that good. It might even be better. This makes “Scarface” look like a cartoon.

The alphabet agencies are all in play again and we get a better look at Mexican politics and military tactics as well as the paramilitary organizations the cartels control to enforce their dominance and protect their territories. The cost of the drug trade is very high and one weeps for the average citizen who lives in these areas and is forced to deal with domestic terrorism, human trafficking and crushing poverty on a day to day basis.

I have become a Don Winslow fanatic. Even as I write this review, I am planning on going by the bookstore tomorrow to pick up two more Winslow books and see what else this storyteller has up his sleeve. There are books I keep and books I pass on. Winslow’s have a permanent place on my shelves with a guillotine hanging over borrowers heads who do not return the books. You have been warned!!

Please, buy this man’s books so he will keep writing. It is a wonderful reading experience. 5 stars plus. show less

The Cartel by Don Winslow is the second book in his Mexican Drug Cartel trilogy and this one is every bit as dark and violent as the first. This book is over 600 pages and together the first two books span over 40 years as the author details the rise of the cartels and the horrific violence that they spawned. The main character is DEA officer Art Keller whose main objective is to bring down the biggest of the drug overlords, Adan Barrera. These two are sworn enemies who have dogged each other for years, each one obsessed by the other.

These books present a multifaceted view of the war on drugs and show how the gangster tactics were slowly set aside in favor of global terrorism. Although not recognized as such, the cartels have become show more media savvy armies that spout some of the basics that we heard from Al Qaeda. In the years of 2004 to 2014 thousands were killed, and as the killings mounted, the way people were put to death became more and more nightmarish as these deaths were used to implant terror and control the population.

It is obvious that the author has done extensive research and although it is classified as fiction, there are many real life incidents that appear on the pages. The author states his purpose behind these books is to inform and advocate but it bears repetition to warn prospective readers of the high body count, and the grim descriptions of rape and torture. I have one more book in this trilogy to read and although this author delivers one hell of a story, it may be awhile before I am ready to face the violence, corruption and terror once again. show less

The only time most Americans think about Mexico’s drug cartel is when the violence crosses the Rio Grande and claims the lives of one or two American citizens. Well, shame on us, because other than those rare moments when they spill blood here, do we even consider the reality of what Mexicans have been living through for at least the last two decades. When it comes to controlling drug traffic and territories, everyone is fair game to the resulting violence: family members, newspaper reporters, teachers, women, children, policemen, the innocent and the guilty, alike. And, worst of all, like their terrorist cousins on the other side of the world, the gangs now capture the shootings, explosions, and decapitations on video for the entire show more world to see. Don Winslow’s The Cartel schools us on just how horrible the situation along the U.S./Mexican border really is today – and why so many Mexicans cross that border to escape the mayhem.

Sometime Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Art Keller learned all about the cartel from the inside. Keller, half-Mexican himself, has known reigning drug kingpin Adán Barrera since the two were children. The onetime close friends, though, are now mortal enemies, and each has sworn to put the other in his grave. As The Cartel begins Keller is content with the new life and identity he has created for himself on the U.S. side of the river. He knows that Barrera is looking for him, but Keller is surprised when his old DEA boss finds him first and presses him to rejoin the fight to destroy the cartel.

The battle is on – and what a battle it turns out to be. Over the next several hundred pages, Winslow follows the bloody evolution of a drug cartel coming apart at the seams as one drug lord after another falls in a pool of blood to his successor. No one is safe; no one can be trusted; and no one is going to live long enough to become an old man. The hell of it, though, is that they will take thousands and thousands of Mexicans down with them.

This 19-CD audiobook clocks in at more than twenty-three hours of listening time, so finding an expert reader has to have been a high priority for its producers – a goal they met admirably by hiring Ray Porter for the job. Porter’s mastery of accents, voices, and vocal inflections makes it easy for listeners to distinguish between the book’s many characters and their complicated relationships, something that audio readers will appreciate more and more as the book progresses.

Bottom Line: The Cartel is a brutal crime thriller intimately based on the research that Don Winslow did on the Mexican drug cartel. Its audiobook version is the perfect choice for the next extended road trip you take, just be forewarned that it is not a story for little ears. It’s an ugly old world down there. show less

This is a broad, sweeping magnum opus of a novel that has historic breadth and scope and chronicles the modern history of Mexico and the Cartel wars that have absolutely decimated that country. This work, at well over six hundred pages, doesn’t feel long. Rather, it feels overwhelming. This continues the story about the Drug Lord (Adan Barrera) and the Border Lord (Art Keller) that Winslow began in 2005’s Power of the Dog. Winslow could easily have parceled out the 1200 pages that make up these two novels into half a dozen novels. There is not one page extra here. I wouldn’t cut anything out of these books.

This is the story of Art Keller, who, as a DEA agent in Mexico, saw his partner tortured and brutalized and vowed revenge on show more the cartels. It is the story of his counterpart on the chessboard, Adan Barrera, who seems almost invincible, and who, even, in prison, controlled what seemed like half the Mexican government. It is the story of a chess match played out between these two men, where every move by the DEA and the honest federales only seems to play into Barrera’s hands. Knock out the drug cartels in one area and Barrera consolidates his power. Knock them out elsewhere and local government topples.

It is also the story of how an impoverished underclass in Mexico had nowhere to turn when even the highest levels of the government were on the take, when the cartels owned the prison wardens, the army, the local police forces. It is the story of kids growing up in the slums of Mexican cities and barrios of American border towns who had nothing became narco-terrorists and how the corruption of the local police and federales took over whole swaths of the country and, as one army commander explained, it was not a choice between being on the take or not, it was choice for them as to which side to ally with because they either picked a side or die.

Based in part on real historical events, the book tells the story of the clashes between the different cartels, each wanting to control the plazas, or the border accesses to the U.S.A. It is the story of how the battle between these cartels became more and more violent until the savagery and death that ensued crossed beyond every line of decency. Wholesale massacres became commonplace. Torture became a normal way of life. There were areas like Juarez where any police officer who did not support one cartel or the other was literally torn apart. Heads were hacked off and whole dance clubs set on fire. In the Juarez valley, journalists were killed and ordered to report only what the cartels wanted. Whole villages were wiped out and the entire city devastated as if a full-out war had taken place.

Another part of the story is how ultimately ineffective every attempt to contain the violence was. How could a hunt for the drug lords be carried out when corrupt officials were bagging half a million dollars a month? And, there was so much money involved that every time someone was taken into prison or killed, someone else took his place, more brutal, more savage, than the previous regimes. And, the story tells how Washington failed to understand how much of a war this really was and required its agents to fight this war with one hand tied behind their backs. And, how the drug kingpins used American policy to their advantage to stay in power and to wipe out their competition.
This is a story that needed to be told. It is so close to home, but few in America talk about what has happened just south of our border and how quick and ruthless the descent into savagery became. show less

This is truly an epic novel, a kind of "Godfather" on steroids, a fictionalized version of a decade of the Mexican drug wars. There is intrigue and competition among various cartel families, leading to betrayals, assassinations, and manipulations of other power-players like politicians, police and army officers, and journalists. But whereas Don Corleone's extremes might lead to an ambush to a garroting of a disloyal subordinate, his Mexican counterparts might leave mass graves in their wake and whole populations living in terror. A reader has to get used to beheading as a form of retribution in order to get through this book.

As far as I can tell, there is a fair amount of authenticity to the content. The cartels, as identified in the show more novel, were (are?) real. They did conduct a virtual reign of terror in the first decade of this century. Names of cartel leaders and others have been changed, however, and the book felt to me that it ended a little too tidily. Two major protagonists are a DEA agent and a cartel leader who carry personal vendettas toward one another, and I suppose that for excitement's sake there had to be a major showdown between them, but real life isn't that "neat" (especially since the implication is that following the showdown, Mexico has is enjoying a comeback again--all is at peace, etc.).

This of course is the trouble with novels that take real life events and build novels around them. They make readers like me wonder what's REALLY real and what's not. For instance, did cartel corruption extend as far as Mexico's "White House"?

On the other hand, one shouldn't look to novels to get their history lessons. Let's just consider what transpires in The Cartel as an "alternate universe." Because it was a thrilling book and a good read. show less