The Border - Don Winslow

Winslow - back on top form. Brilliant.

The Border concludes the Cartel trilogy and brings it bang up to date. Art Keller emerges from the Guatemalan jungle to take over as head of the DEA, having realised that the only way to tackle America's drug problem is to take out the big money men. That doesn't just mean the Cartel bosses, because Keller now knows there are people above them on the US end of the chain. For the Cartels drugs mean money and power. For the financiers power can be bought by money. And now they plan to buy the ultimate power.

Meanwhile, the fact that Keller has finally taken out Adan Barrera, head of the Sinaloan Cartel and effective boss of bosses, means that the second tier go to war to determine a successor. The lack of order means there are vacuums for figures from the past to return to: men like Rafael Caro, who tortured and murdered Keller's partner thirty years ago, and Eddie Ruiz who was there when Keller took out Adan.

It is a big, BIG story, and rightly so. In so many ways it is the story of our time, the fifty year war on drugs which America has not and will never win. How close Winslow's fiction comes to reality will be open to debate. What is inarguable, a stone fact, is that nobody does this story better than Don Winslow. Does anybody else even dare to try? Each of the three novels - The Power of the Dog, The Cartel, and now The Border - is a major achievement. The three together are a landmark.

Savages - Don Winslow

Savages (2010) comes between The Power of the Dog and The Cartel. It is connected in so far as it is set against the cartel wars in Mexico which are the subject matter of the two linked novels. Some of the key characters in those get a mention in this. Otherwise Savages is very different. The Power of the Dog and The Cartel are like James Ellroy on good cocaine rather than bad speed. Savages has flavours of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen and the texture of George V Higgins stripped down.
What? you wonder. Can you get more stripped down than George V? Winslow can. As The Donald might say, Bigly.


As an indication, we have 290 chapters in 302 pages. Some lines are so fragmentary they don't have full stops. Sometimes Winslow takes the time to explain the etymology of some of his acronyms. Ophelia's mom, for example, is Pacu - Passive Aggressive Queen of the Universe. Others you are left to work out for yourself. Some passages are presented as movie script - a fun inside joke once you realise that Oliver Stone had bought the movie rights before Savages was even published. I have mentioned the Stone movie before. It's his best in twenty years and well worth a watch. But it's not as good as the novel.


Ben and Chon grow dope in South Orange County, the best dope on the market. Ben is a third world activist, Chon an ex-SEAL who has served in all the nastiest theatres of post-millennium war. Ben and Chon are best buds from childhood. They are both in love with Ophelia, who calls herself simply O. O loves them both equally.


But then the Baja Cartel seeks to muscle in on their action. Ben and Chon say no. They are happy to walk away and leave the Baja Cartel to it, but the Cartel says no. They want to market Ben's genetically modified blow. They want the boys' market, they want their people. And to make their point, they kidnap O and threaten to dismember her with a chainsaw.


Which is when things get really nasty...


The pace is relentless, the action bloody. Yet Winslow's gift is to stay perfectly balanced on the thin line between violence and schlock. Even the worst of the bad guys have backstory, people they love. The characterisation is rich and varied. It is, in short, a masterpiece.

The Power of the Dog - Don Winslow

Don Winslow is a bit like James Ellroy. He writes dark crime in short, pared-down sentences. He depicts the underbelly of the American Dream in which corruption is the only currency. Unlike Ellroy, he keeps his conspiracy theories just this side of psychosis.


The Power of the Dog (2005) is perhaps his most ambitious novel. It took him six years to write and Winslow prides himself on productivity. It spans thirty years in the war on drugs seen through the eyes of three main characters, Art Keller, DEA agent, Adan Barrera, drug trafficker, and Sean Callan, Irish mobster turned mafia hitman. Over the years they find themselves in alliances and opposition. Linking them is high-class prostitute Nora Hayden and a broad cast of second-string characters including Tio Barrera, founder of the Mexican drug cartel, Jimmy Peaches Picone, would-be mafia boss, and Sal Scachi, colonel, hitman, the ultimate fixer. And many, many more.


Too many characters? Too much plot? On balance, no. Sometimes, as you work through the 500+ pages, you wonder, is this getting us anywhere? Does this character contribute anything to the whole? But you keep going and find out that, yes, everything contributes, every character serves a purpose. Plotting is Winslow's dominant skill. He writes well - very well - but holds back from launching into the sort of obscene purple prose that curdles Ellroy's later work. The dialogue is spot on - each character has a distinct voice, and the principals also have individual inner voices.


Did I love this book? No - you can't love a book this dark. Is it brilliant? Does it achieve what it sets out to do? Does it make me want to seek out more of Winslow's extensive catalogue, like for example Savages (2010) which Winslow turned into the script for Oliver Stone's best film in years? Yes, yes, and yes. Apparently there are half-a-dozen Neal Carey mysteries, plus standalone novels including The Death and Life of Bobby Z, The Winter of Frankie Machine, and The Kings of Cool. I mean, the titles alone are enough to spark my interest.