The Power of the Dog

The first novel in Don Winslow's Cartel trilogy, spanning 1975 to 2004, traces DEA agent Art Keller's decades-long, increasingly personal war against the Barrera family as they build a Mexican cocaine empire.

What begins as a Cold War-era alliance to fight leftist guerrillas curdles into an obsessive blood feud that drags in a corrupt priest, a hitman from Hell's Kitchen, a high-class escort, and the U.S. government itself.

Grounded in the real history of the drug war, it is an unflinching look at complicity, power, and the human cost on both sides of the border.