Watermark Books & Cafe

The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow

Here, for twenty-six bucks, one gets thirty years (and 600 pages) of the convoluted, mostly hopeless, American “war on drugs.” Don Winslow is the talented, mostly little-known author of two novels of West Coast crime and craziness. I liked them both, and although somewhat daunted by the length of this new one, I was ready to see what he could do with a meatier theme. Boy, does he ever get his teeth into this one.

The plot, like the drug trade itself, involves dozens of key characters and
rambles over three decades of violence, corruption, and money. This is the narcocorrida of narcocorridas. Art Keller is the main man, a DEA agent with a Vietnam/CIA/mercenary background who truly wants to stop the enormous pain that accompanies the drug business. Of necessity, he has to operate more or less as a Lone Ranger and loses family, friends, and whatever normal life he might have ever enjoyed.

We all know the plot. The mastery that Winslow brings to the story is the
detail and nuance of the way narcotics conspire to destroy people, who for whatever reason – innocence, greed, or just plain malevolence – become entangled in its network. Nobody much wins… and everybody is corrupt – or corrupted. Winslow’s story rings with such truth that one leaves it suspicious of every politician, soldier, police officer, and business person from Toronto to Cali – especially those in Mexico and the United States. As one Mexican drug “lord” muses:

“…most of the cops planned on getting rich… It was like a franchise operation… Easiest money in the world. Money for nothing… And that’s in Mexico alone. There are also U.S. Customs agents to pay to look the other way… There
are bribes to city cops… And to state police and sheriff’s departments. And secretaries and typists in the DEA… And that is what the Americans simply cannot seem to understand – that all they do is drive up the price and make us rich… The
Americans take a product that literally grows on trees and turn it into a valuable commodity. Without them, cocaine and marijuana would be like oranges, and instead of making billions smuggling it, I’d be making pennies doing stoop labor in some California field, picking it… This is what Mexican cops appreciate that American cops don’t. We are partners in the same enterprise… Comrades in the War on Drugs. We could not exist without each other.”

Winslow’s cynicism is there, but this novel moves with such pace, character, and feeling such that, scary as it all is, this world is fascinating, and we are moved to thoughtful reflection.

Review by Bruce Jacobs, June 10, 2005

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