From Don Winslow (“A writer so good you almost want to keep him to yourself”—Ian Rankin), an electrifying new novel of love and revenge, politics and influence, corruption and honor. Moving at breakneck speed, it tells a riveting, sometimes harrowing story set in the shifting nexus of power among the Latin American drug cartels, the American mob, and the U.S. government. Spanning the years from the rise of the Mexican drug Federación in the 1970s to the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s to the vicious drug wars of the 1990s, the action ranges from Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen and the halls of Washington to the streets of Tijuana and the deserts of the American Southwest. The players: a DEA agent, a drug lord, a call girl, a hit man, a priest. Caught up in the war on drugs, willingly or not, each is trying to escape the sins of the past while negotiating the treacherous currents of the present. Their seemingly disparate lives—taking shape on one side of the law or the other, or straddling both—slowly converge as they struggle to overcome, in any way possible, the “power of the dog.” From the jungles of Latin America to the vicious netherworld of the California–Mexico border, this is the war on drugs you haven’t seen—its devastations and deliriums, its alliances and betrayals, its pawns and kings. A masterpiece of epic storytelling, The Power of the Dog is Don Winslow at the very top of his form. Winslow ( California Fire and Life, 1999) once again offers a crime novel with breakneck pacing, a sardonic worldview, and a teeming cast of superheated characters. He also displays bold ambition as he takes on the war on drugs, moving his extremely violent story between the DEA, the Latin American drug cartels, and the Mob. At the center of the novel is DEA agent Art Keller, who makes a fatal mistake as an idealistic rookie. On his first posting, to Culiacan, Mexico, capital of the drug trade, Art befriends the Barrera brothers. Their friendship will eventually turn into a personal vendetta of epic proportions when it is revealed that their uncle, Miguel, a member of the state police, is a drug kingpin. The cast also features an Irish hit man, a call girl, and a priest, as Winslow feverishly indicts the U.S. war on drugs, tracing flawed policies that have cost DEA agents their lives yet failed to stop the flow of drugs across the border. Intricate plotting and manic energy power this page-turner. Joanne Wilkinson Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “The war on drugs is powerfully dramatized in Winslow’s ambitious, dense and gritty latest . . . Winslow’s depth of research and unflagging attention to detail give the story both heft and immediacy, and his staccato, present-tense prose shifts easily among wildly disparate settings and multiple points of view. A complex plot, well-drawn characters and plenty of double-crossing make this a thinking person’s narco-thriller.”– Publishers Weekly “This book comes at you like a champion boxer, deft and probing, and bristling with menace. Aiming for both the head and the gut, it connects solidly with every punch.” –Dan Fesperman, author of The Warlord’s Son “ The Power of the Dog is the most compelling crime novel I’ve read in several years. It’s sharply written, vertiginously fast, and best of all it’s about something. In the unholy trinity of narcotics, dollars and politics Winslow has located our heart of darkness. This is a spectacular novel, disturbing and unforgettable.” –T. Jefferson Parker, author of California Girl “With an epic’s scope and a freight train’s rush, The Power of the Dog is an absolute page-turner. I couldn’t put it down and I was sorry when it ended. As always, Don Winslow delivers!”–S.J. Rozan, author of Absent Friends “From the heart-wrenching very first sentence I was hooked. A soaring, blazing saga of the real drug world, it is masterly, moving, and compassionate: an instant classic. It’s been a long wait since Winslow’s wondrous California Fire and Life . Was it worth the wait? Was it ever, and then some.” –Ken Bruen, author of The Killing of the Tinkers   “Don Winslow’s  The Power of the Dog  is a great read. Intricate, powerful, and fierce, it takes the reader into the moral labyrinth of the international drug trade and the men who lose their souls along the way. Winslow’s knowledge and insight have never been more fully realized. I believed every word of it.” –Robert Ferrigno, author of The Wake-Up   “ The Power of the Dog is a steaming cauldron of crime, corruption, and cabals, an epic of Godfather proportions with just enough fact sprinkled into the stew to make this one fabulous fable.”–Andrew Vachss, author of Down Here “ The Power of the Dog is the first great dope novel since Dog Soldiers thirty years ago. It’s frightening and sad, with a superbly sustained intensity. It’s a beautifully compressed vision of hell, with all its attendant moral madness.”–James Ellroy, author of T