The Power of the Dog

Don Winslow's crime novel covers three decades of the war on drugs, drawing on the DEA's part in it. Its central figures include DEA agent Art Keller; Adán Barrera, heir to the head of the Mexican drug federación; Nora Hayden, a sex worker; and Sean Callan, a New York street gangster. After the Barrera family tortures and murders a fellow agent in Mexico, Keller's drive for revenge becomes an obsession that edges toward lawlessness. The novel shows the brutality of the drug war in graphic scenes of torture and massacre, and how organizations from the cartels to the Vatican work together. Winslow spent six years writing and researching it. The Cartel is its sequel.

Stephen King, writing about this novel together with its sequel, The Cartel, said he was completely swept up, and that readers could not ask more of emotionally moving entertainment.