Professional Reviews
One of the Best Books of the Year: A New York Times Critics'' Pick, The Seattle Times , The Denver Post, The Washington Post , Publishers Weekly , Amazon, National Post (Toronto), The Guardian , New Statesman, The Telegraph, The Sunday Times (London), The Daily Mail , The Mail on Sunday The New York Times
"Winslow''s drug war version of The Godfather . . . A big, sprawling, ultimately stunning crime tableau . . . A magnum opus . . . Don Winslow is to the Mexican drug wars what James Ellroy is to L.A. Noir."
-- Janet Maslin Esquire
"An epic, gritty south-of-the-border Godfather for our time. You don''t have to read Don Winslow''s The Power of the Dog to get swept away by The Cartel , its ripped-from-the-headlines sequel, but you should. You should try to get your hands on everything Winslow''s written, because he''s one of the best thriller writers on the planet."
-- Benjamin Percy NPR
"Hugely hypnotic new thriller . . . the pace and feel of an exploded documentary . . . a brilliant and informative work of fiction about a nightmare world that flourishes in the bright light of day."
-- Alan Cheuse Rolling Stone
"A Game of Thrones of the Mexican drug wars, a multipart, intricately plotted, blood-soaked epic that tells the story of how America''s unquenchable appetite for illegal drugs has brought chaos to our southern neighbors and darkened our own political and criminal culture."
-- Will Dana Booklist (starred review)
"Winslow''s riveting and tragic epic seamlessly blends fact and fiction to tell [an] incredible, heartbreaking story. . . . Winslow never loses control of his subject or his characters, despite the book''s scope and complexity. There is some of The Godfather here, but Winslow''s characterizations, though certainly multidimensional, have more of an edge to them than do Puzo''s, a greater recognition of the tragedy a violent power struggle leaves in its wake. Clearly one of the most ambitious and most accomplished crime novels to appear in the last 15 years, The Cartel will likely retain that distinction even as the twenty-first century grinds on."
-- Bill Ott Arizona Republic
" The Cartel is the most important crime saga of the millennium. This is reporting and expose built around an intricate plot, finely etched characters and whip-crack dialogue. . . . Storytelling that matters."
-- Robert Anglen Lee Child
"Sensationally good, even after the near-perfection of The Power of the Dog. Less of a sequel than an integral part of a solid-gold whole." Men''s Journal
"Winslow is the most fearless chronicler of the chaos and violence along the U.S.-Mexico border . . . who has written what could be the War and Peace of the War on Drugs."
-- Erik Hedegaard Fresh Air
" The Cartel tells its ghastly story with enjoyable verve yet I was even more impressed with the way Winslow uses his plot to offer a superb history of the cartels and those out to stop them. Steeped in reportage, the novel. . . possesses a virtue I associate with traditional documentaries: it explains things. I finished the book understanding why Jurez is so violent; why cartels murder so many innocent peop≤ why both the American and Mexican governments favor some cartels over others; and why the war on drugs is not just futile, but morally compromised. It''s here that fiction and documentary come together in a shared sense of, well, bleakness."
-- John Powers Michael Connelly
"Don Winslow has done it again. The Cartel is a first rate edge-of-your-seat thriller for sure, but it also continues Winslow''s incisive reporting on the dangers and intricacies of the world we live in. There is no higher mark for a storyteller than to both educate and entertain. With Winslow these aspects are entwined like strands of DNA. He''s a master and this book proves it once again." Los Angeles Times
"Winslow has delivered two of the most . . . emotionally resonant novels in the past decade, 2005''s The Power of the Dog and its epic conclusion, The Cartel . . . . His prose is sparse and ferocious, and his rapid-fire story hits you like bullets from an AK-47."
-- Ivy Pochoda Entertainment Weekly
"High-octane . . . The righteous indignation that fuels Winslow''s tale of cops, cartels, and the near-apocalyptic havoc they can create is, to use a sadly appropriate word, addictive."
-- Clark Collis James Ellroy
"Don Winslow delivers his longest and finest novel yet in The Cartel. This is the War and Peace of dopewar books. Tense, brutal, wildly atmospheric, stunningly plotted, deeply etched. It''s got the jazz dog feel of a shot of pure meth!!" The Sunday Times (London)
"Astoundingly ambitious . . . It is unlikely to be bettered this year."
-- John Dugdale (Thriller of the Month) Vanity Fair
"With corruption, violence, and a love story to boot, [ The Cartel ] is sure to have you grasping at the edge of your seat."
-- Elise Taylor Details
"Winslow has long been hailed for his hard-boiled humor and storytelling, and this sequel to the best-selling The Power of the Dog shows why. . . . The coke-fueled, blood-soaked horror show that ensues would scare Tony Montana straight."
-- David Swanson Harlan Coben
"The Cartel is a gut-punch of a novel. Big, ambitious, violent and wildly entertaining, Don Winslow''s latest is an absolute must-read." Los Angeles Magazine
"An adrenaline rush, addictive as crack, and epic in the pre-Del-Taco-marketing-their-burritos-as-"epic" sense of the word. Don Winslow deals in corruption, subversion, and revenge with an intensity that makes him irresistible." Associated Press
" The Cartel is an intricately detailed narrative of the cartel life. . . . Winslow has become an unintentional expert on a subject that sickens him."
-- Hillel Italie The Huffington Post
"A sprawling epic of drug trafficking, murder, coercion, and corruption at the highest levels of Mexican law enforcement and government. . . . A grand and gripping epic novel."
-- Mark Rubinstein The San Diego Union-Tribune
"A monster of a novel--big in story, big in ambition. Based on real events, it''s unavoidably violent but not voyeuristic. There is a deep understanding of the bonds and betrayals inherent to the drug trade, considerable musing about the difference between vengeance and justice, and a recognition that even in the face of soul-sapping depravity, there can be nobility and courage."
-- John Wilkens Sunday Herald (Scotland)
" The Cartel offers a riveting expose of a modern tragedy where the fast pace of the thriller narrative never stumbles over the painstaking attention paid to detail and background. More importantly perhaps, they offer an alternative perspective on the accepted history of America''s involvement in the ''war on drugs'', a shocking litany of greed, complicity and political machination. . . . Winslow [writes with] the authority of an investigative reporter and the narrative skill of a best-selling author."
-- Alan Morrison MysteryPeople (Pick of the Month)
"Winslow deftly uses violence in the novel, fully aware of how much he asks the reader to act as witness. . . . The denouncement gives The Wild Bunch a run for its money in the final showdown category. He builds up to these moments beautifully, creating emotion and setting the stage for visceral attitude when such scenes explode. . . . For a mammoth novel, The Cartel moves. Winslow never loses his humanity and rage as he sweeps across a decade of rough shadow history to the wounded grace note it ends on. It captures everything great about crime fiction and makes it epic." Kirkus Reviews
"[A] vast and ambitious thriller . . . Winslow has envisioned his novel on an epic scale. . . . At heart, this is the familiar tale of symbiosis between pursuer and pursued, reconfigured for the war on drugs and given a mean noir edge." Barnes and Noble Review
"Don Winslow is one of those shape-shifter novelists; now light, now dark. Funny one minute, terrifying the next. . . . A Wagernian epic of murder and vengeance . . . The Cartel is as much a work of meticulous journalism as artful fiction. But through the blood haze and the political fog, Winslow allows us to see--and even to care about--his skillfully drawn characters."
-- Anna Mundow Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Masterly . . . This exhaustively researched novel elucidates not just the situation in Mexico but the consequences of our own
