539 pages
English language
Published July 6, 2005 by Knopf, Distributed by Random House.
The Power of the Dog is a 2005 crime/thriller novel by American writer Don Winslow, based on the DEA's involvement with the War on Drugs. The book was published after six years of writing and research by the author.
Masterpiece. One of the best crime fiction novels ever written. An intricate epic with characters weaving in and out over the course of 4 decades. Read it slowly over time to appreciate and savour its scope.
A few hundred trigger warnings for the faint-hearted.
Primo libro della trilogia sull'agente Art Keller. Attraverso le vincende "fittizie" di un agente della DEA, una prostituta d'alto borgo e un criminale da newyork irlandese si ripercorre la fase di nascita, ascesa e tracollo della cosiddetta "Federacion", forse la più potente organizzazione di narcotraffico del Messico. Intrattenente e si fa leggere con moltissimo piacere (ma, parere personale, non grido al capolavoro)
My, what an exhausting, terrifying, bloody, gory, violent, thrilling, emotional rollercoaster of a book!
This tangled set of interlocking stories examines the connections among money, drugs, and political power that makes the War on Drugs a much larger theatre of war than it might appear. We follow several characters from the 1970s into the 90s: a DEA agent who gets a friend killed and in a fit of remorse goes after the drug lords responsible, setting off unintended consequences; an Irish hitman from Hell's Kitchen who gets involved in an alliance with the Italian Mafia and, through them,covert operations run for the US government in Central America; a Sinaloan drug lord who has something of a conscience, but who is unable to do anything but sow destruction; a young, top-dollar call girl who crosses all of their paths sooner or later; and the one truly good person in the book - an activist bishop who doesn't quit smoking because he knows he'll be assassinated …
This tangled set of interlocking stories examines the connections among money, drugs, and political power that makes the War on Drugs a much larger theatre of war than it might appear. We follow several characters from the 1970s into the 90s: a DEA agent who gets a friend killed and in a fit of remorse goes after the drug lords responsible, setting off unintended consequences; an Irish hitman from Hell's Kitchen who gets involved in an alliance with the Italian Mafia and, through them,covert operations run for the US government in Central America; a Sinaloan drug lord who has something of a conscience, but who is unable to do anything but sow destruction; a young, top-dollar call girl who crosses all of their paths sooner or later; and the one truly good person in the book - an activist bishop who doesn't quit smoking because he knows he'll be assassinated before long. Crossing the porous border between Mexico and the US, and the even more porous border between organized crime, drugs, and US foreign policy, this story is brutally violent. Though the carnage becomes numbing after a while I'm sure that's intentional - it's not gratuitous, it's filling in the blanks in the news accounts. Winslow is as angry here as John LeCarre in ABSOLUTE FRIENDS, and like that novel this book has its didactic moments. It's audacious and complex and deepens as it goes along, coming together in the end with a double-barreled climax. This is one of those books that some readers will find daunting for its length, its complexity, its violence, and its impassioned politics. But I thought it was stunning. This book will be on my "best of the year" list.
