Don Winslow’s knowledge of the ongoing drug wars in Mexico and the U.S. is prolific and frightening. In ” The Cartel”, DEA agent Art Keller has finally got his man. The cartel kingpin, Adan Barrera. The man who murdered his partner and controls the Mexican cartels. After being transferred to a Mexican prison, Barrera is a prisoner in name only. Drug money and threats of death are very strong motivators for looking the other way and Adan lives better in prison than most of us do on the outside.
After his escape, in which everyone it seems is complicit, he is planning on taking back his territories but who can you trust to help with that? Everyone it seems has their own army of trained killers and no one is safe from the brutality of those fighting for territory.
This is a novel that not only entertains the reader, but educates them as well. I was disgusted with our own government, my heart breaking for the good people of Mexico who are caught in the crossfire of heartless, greedy and just plain evil drug dealers.
This is a painfully honest look at what is ongoing between our two countries and if you can only read one important novel this year, this is the one you need to read.
The pace is fast and the characters were well fleshed out. How do you stop killers with no heart or morals? Maybe by turning into the same thing? What would you do?
It has taken me days to come out of the fury I felt after finishing this novel. Buy it, rent it, or get it from the Library, but read this book!
This book had me up all night. It begs the question can you ever really leave your past in the past? Can a person’s basic nature really change? This Surgeon and CPA think that they have. Life is great in the suburbs with nice homes, perfect wives and children. It could be any of your friends or neighbors or even you. But, and you knew there was going to be a but, one day an old friend from the old neighborhood shows up with a “too good to be true” business venture. For a short time all is well and money is coming in but Danny is uneasy, something isn’t sitting right with him. The Manhattan steakhouse they’ve invested in looks good from the outside,but some of the clientele is a bit mobbish looking. While Roddy is happy with the CPA end for the first few months,soon things just aren’t adding up. It’s when they try to opt out that things start getting nasty. It’s then that they have to decide exactly how far they will go to protect their family and the way of life they have built for themselves. It is a brutally honest book that took me days to get out of my head.
