by Don Winslow
So if you can't handle those pictures rattling around your head this isn't the book for you. I have seen interviews where the author has addressed concerns (his own and those of others) that by telling what he sees as a true to life story he's also engaging in violence porn. That could be.
As with certain scenes in George R.R. Martin's A Dance With Dragons, Winslow has created some vivid violence sequences that occasionally caused me to put the book down and reflect on the world's evil. And I have a pretty high tolerance for that sort of stuff.
Nevertheless there is very little that Winslow has imagined in this book that hasn't occurred in real life. In fact he adapts a few real life incidents. There are devils and demons who walk this planet and live long, happy and remunerative, albeit utterly malevolent, lives. It is an open sociological and historical question as to why with a few notable exceptions American organized crime groups did not routinely liquidate the families of any disobedient employees, clients or victims and avoided murdering police officers, judges, politicians and other high profile "civilians" who got on the local Mob boss's last nerves.
Organized crime in Mexico and Guatemala has no such compunctions. Does the difference have something to do with the violence of the pre-Colombian Mayan and Aztec societies? Is it caused by the even more extreme violence of the Spanish conquests? Is it caused by the repeated US interventions? I can't answer those questions.
Though some Latin American countries are more violent than the United States, they might be equal in terms of corruption. South of the border the corruption might be more direct and in your face. American corruption could be more difficult to eliminate because much of it is legal.
Art Keller, the trilogy's tortured anti-hero DEA agent has come home from Mexico. He made a deal with Adan Barrera, the Sinaloa Cartel boss who tortured and murdered Keller's partner and who has attempted to murder Keller multiple times. There were even more violent drug cartels coming up behind Barrera. So reluctantly Keller used Barrera and the ever resourceful and always horny Eddie Ruiz to decapitate those organizations and hopefully slow their growth. Unable to let go of the memory of his partner and the other various Barrera ordered atrocities, Keller murdered Barrera. Returning to the US Keller becomes the head of the DEA. Ruiz is serving a short sentence stateside for his co-operation.
Keller discovers that by eliminating Barrera he has made things worse. The reduced Sinaloa Cartel starts a civil war while also battling old rivals and new upstarts. A shadowy figure may be manipulating all of this behind the scenes. For his part, Ruiz has his own plans.
Worst of all a brash New York real estate mogul/reality TV star named John Dennison (this combines the first and last names of fake names Donald Trump used when he leaked information to the press) looks like he just might win the Republican nomination for President and perhaps the Presidency. Dennison's oleaginous son-in-law does business deals with banks backed by Mexican cartels. Against the backdrop of all this there's a flood of fentanyl laced Mexican heroin into the US. The cartels are switching from cocaine to heroin. Addicts are dying of overdoses but still buying.
This is like a Dickens story. Winslow creates many realistic characters that you will, if not quite identify with, certainly understand. A young boy named Nico flees Guatemalan gang violence to make a harrowing journey to the US, where tragically he is forced into gangs to survive. A former college student finds that heroin takes away the pain of her molestation by her stepfather. A young Mexican man groomed for cartel leadership discovers that he doesn't have the brutal and treacherous nature needed to succeed. Another cartel leader orders atrocities too disturbing to describe but is also a kind husband who runs errands for his wife, even as assassins attack him. A NYPD cop goes undercover and finds that he dislikes his boss as much as hates the criminals with whom he works.
An old Black man serving three life sentences because he loaned a friend a phone waits with increasing desperation for a pardon that might never come.
Keller struggles with his sympathy for drug users and growing conviction that "war" is not the framework to get people to stop using. Keller still has his righteous anger for drug barons, their political and financial backers and his anger at himself for his compromises and mistakes. Some of those compromises and mistakes leave Keller in a perilous condition once political power changes hands. His enemies play for keeps. But so does Keller.
This book was just under 700 pages. It is a page turner that you won't want to put down. Winslow is a hell of a storyteller. It is something that will make you think about how complicit we are in the horrors that occur every day in this country and elsewhere. Although the product is narcotics the story of exploitation could be told about any item exported to the US. This is not just a grim tale. There is a fair amount of mordant humor, much of it centered around Ruiz and his complicated romantic life. This is the rare novel which works both as entertainment and education.
"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
