'The Power of the Dog' by Don Winslow
A cat and mouse thriller set in Mexico and skips backwards and forwards from the 70s to the present time as it traces the birth, growth and bust of the coke trade into the US and its interaction with US foreign policies to step communism in Latin America. Taken me ages to read and it feels like the length of a phone book!
Some typical crime fiction devices that are present in the narrative:
the hero as loner
The main character, Art Keller, is a half breed Mexican American who feels he belongs to neither culture. Keller finally feels accepted when the CIA take him into the fold but with the end of the Cold War he is reassigned to a CIA unfriendly DEA. Once again he doesn't belong. It's set up immediately that he has few family ties so the reader understands why he is so easily lured into a father-son dependency with a powerful Mexican druglord whom he has grown to call 'uncle' and into brotherhood with the druglord's street smart nephews. As with most heroic journeys, the apprentice is forced to confront his mentor and Art spends much of the novel pursuing the druglord and then the newphews, at the cost of his marriage and colleague's lives. And at the constant risk of his own.
the flawed hero
Keller starts the story in a state of grace - ethical; highly moral; an ex-CIA agent who knows he has to hide his training if he is to find law enforcement work in the more conservative post-cold war world. Yet the closer he gets to capturing the Houdini like druglord, the darker Keller becomes. Soon he is fabricating sources, risking the lives of his underlings and the innocents attached to the drug lords, and taking the law into his own hands.
the streetwise cast of seedy characters
Plenty of Elmore Leonard colour (with a Mexican accent) - the priest who falls in love with a hooker, the Irish Hell's Kitchen gangster/hitman, CIA gman who turns Mafia 'made guy', flamboyant narcocowboys, and of course, the stereotypical hooker with a heart of gold. What's impressive with the drawing of the characters is that each has a lengthly and complex psychological history. Winslow has let these imaginary selves hang out in his head for more than a few beers. We know their explosive lives are going to collide with a crash and can't wait for their tracks to cross.
from a writer's perspective
A number of accomplishments stand out in this work. First is the use of different voices for each of the main protagonists and antagonists. Whilst remaining in third person, each character thinks in different dialects, with sentence constructions that reflect their culture and background. Winslow has clearly spend a long time thinking about these characters in order to make their personalities and socio-cultural identities leap off the page. We meet each when they are in their late teens to early twenties and follow them until the close of the novel, approx twenty-five years after it opens. They are introduced at different stages in the narrative and we live in their minds as they age and weather.
Second is the depth of the plot. We start with simple drug smuggling and end up with an expose of US covert and clothed foreign policies designed to arrest the spread of communism and communist leaders in Latin America. Like all good stories, it starts from a focused point and widens the lens. The poppy field is the trade off for inside information on leftist priests and politicians and the price of using the drug industry's considerable reach to install and keep US-friendly Latino governments in place. So we have events happening quickly that seem to be leading to the simple goal of defeating the drug trade, only to find the classic second act switch of the achievement of the goal leading to deeper problems. The plot offers protagonist Keller ample opportunities to explore the grey moral ground, but as each choice grows darker, he redeems himself by obsessively protecting those whom he has placed in danger. In the final pages, he commits the ultimate act of heroism and is ready to offer his own life. Always just off the page is the sense that the events of the plot are being propelled by Keller's dogged determination to bring down the drug cartel and especially the family that once shielded him.
Winslow, D. The Power of the Dog.
