The Cartel by Don Winslow

Don Winslow’s The Power of the Dog was an epic fictional dissection of the US-Mexican drug wars, rightly regarded as a modern classic of crime fiction. Now, ten years later, Winslow’s sequel, The Cartel, has been unleashed upon the literary landscape.

Like its predecessor, The Cartel is justified in its scope and ambition: the ongoing conflict at its heart is among the most violent and senseless in the world today. Winslow, influenced by real-life events and his deep, unflinching research, has created a fictional mirror image of the true situation, utilising the antagonism between DEA agent Art Keller and patron of El Federación, Adán Barrera, as the emotional spine of his novel.

From this central narrative, Winslow spins tales of the soldiers, journalists and innocents caught up in events beyond their control. The Cartel is a brutal dissection of some of the most unjustly ignored events in the modern world. If you feel angry reading The Cartel, then that’s as it should be. The injustices on the page are real. And when even the nominal heroes have blood on their hands, it is apparent that something is very wrong indeed. This is a powerhouse of a novel from an author who understands the most subtle nuances of his subject matter, and may be one of the most essential crime fiction books of 2015.