That's because Winslow lays it on pretty thick, making Keller both sympathetic and appealing. In this story in which justice and revenge are often indistinguishable we never waver in our loyalty to the DEA agent. So the DEA asks Keller to go after Barrera full tilt, putting his meditative life behind. Once the other kingpin is out of the way Barrera arranges a jail-break for himself, and begins to rebuild his old organization. will send him back to Mexico to complete his prison term in a Mexican penitentiary, Barerra will give up a fellow drug kingpin. government it's as though a giant fist has upended a chess board: If the U.S. But when the gangster makes a deal with the U.S. Having put his personal nemesis, Adán Barrera, 'the most powerful drug patrón in the world,' behind bars in an American jail, he dropped off the radar (with the silent blessing of his DEA bosses) and when we first meet him he's in self-imposed isolation working as a bee-keeper at a monastery in New Mexico. On the side of the law stands Art 'Killer' Keller, a former CIA field agent who worked for the DEA for 30 years a real loner, but he got his job done. It's in this slaughter ground that Winslow sets his story, an over-the-top action adventure novel based on broad research and framed as a personal battle between two major characters. the land of pyramids and palaces, deserts and jungles, mountains and beaches, markets and gardens. As one journalist character in the novel, a photographer from Ciudad Juarez, laments, 'my country, Mexico - the land of writers and poets.

And when they're not warring each other for territory and profits, the gangs employ bribery and intimidation right up to the highest levels of government in their embattled nation. That's only a small number of victims compared to the total number of Mexican citizens tortured and killed by the narco-gangsters during this time. The dedication of Don Winslow's novel The Cartel is nearly two pages long: a list of journalists who were either murdered or 'disappeared' in Mexico between 20 - the period covered in this hugely hypnotic new thriller. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Cartel Author Don Winslow

Winslow the cartel