In The Border Winslow concludes the story that he started in The Power of the Dog and The Cartel and which he referenced in The Force and Savages. As with those previous stories there are a number of ultra realistic depictions of extreme depraved violence. So if you can't handle those pictures rattling around your head this isn't the book for you. I have seen interviews where the author has addressed concerns (his own and those of others) that by telling what he sees as a true to life story he's also being needlessly gratuitous. The reader will have to make that call. There are a few places where I had to put the book down for a minute and think about some things.
Art Keller, the trilogy's tortured anti-hero DEA agent, has come home from Mexico. Keller made a deal with Adan Barrera, the Sinaloa Cartel boss who tortured and murdered Keller's partner, and who attempted to murder Keller multiple times. There were more violent drug cartels coming up behind Barrera. So reluctantly Keller used Barrera and the ever resourceful and always horny Eddie Ruiz to eliminate the leaders of those organizations and hopefully slow their growth. Unable to forgive his partner's murder and the other various Barrera ordered atrocities, Keller broke his word and murdered Barrera. Keller returns to the US and becomes the head of the DEA. Because of his co-operation, Ruiz serves a short sentence stateside.
Keller discovers that difficult as it is to accept sometimes the devil you know is indeed better than the next man up. The Sinaloa Cartel falls into a civil war while simultaneously battling old rivals and new upstarts. The cartels switch products from cocaine and marijuana to fentanyl and heroin. Keller has put drug dealers/smugglers in the ground and behind bars for decades but he can't help but wonder if war is the wrong framework for America's drug problem. Keller's time in the Big Seat is growing short. A new Administration is forming. And the President-Elect doesn't like Keller sniffing around his son-in-law's real estate deals with Cartel backed banks. Behind the scenes a quiet austere villain manipulates Cartel and Mafia bosses alike while plotting his revenge.Some of the next generation of Cartel leaders find out that they lack the brutality and treachery needed to fill their fathers' roles while other up and comers reach new depths of depravity. A man who loaned a friend his phone is serving triple life sentences for drug conspiracy while the actual drug dealer took a plea deal and has been free for decades. This is close to a Dickens novel in how WInslow adroitly introduces new characters and interweaves them with old favorites, Winslow definitely has a point of view he wants to get across about the drug war, crime and punishment, how the elites of any society only care about money and power, etc but the story is never didactic. Winslow obviously did his research. Invented plot points merge almost seamlessly with events inspired by real life stories. This book will make you think about the compromises and short cuts we all sometimes take for the greater good.
This was just under 700 pages but it's a very quick read. There is some mordant humor, much of which revolves around Eddie Ruiz, aka Crazy Eddie. Ruiz has a very healthy sense of self-preservation and an even healthier sex drive.
"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives." Winter is Coming Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
