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Shop nowThe Cartel
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Learn moreFrom the internationally bestselling author of the acclaimed novel The Power of the Dog comes The Cartel, a gripping, ripped-from-the-headlines story of power, corruption, revenge, and justice spanning the past decade of the Mexican-American drug wars.
It’s 2004. DEA agent Art Keller has been fighting the war on drugs for thirty years in a blood feud against Adán Barrera, the head of El Federación, the world’s most powerful cartel, and the man who brutally murdered Keller’s partner. Finally putting Barrera away cost Keller dearly—the woman he loves, the beliefs he cherishes, the life he wants to lead.
Then Barrera gets out, determined to rebuild the empire that Keller shattered. Unwilling to live in a world with Barrera in it, Keller goes on a ten-year odyssey to take him down. His obsession with justice—or is it revenge?—becomes a ruthless struggle that stretches from the cities, mountains, and deserts of Mexico to Washington’s corridors of power to the streets of Berlin and Barcelona.
Keller fights his personal battle against the devastated backdrop of Mexico’s drug war, a conflict of unprecedented scale and viciousness, as cartels vie for power and he comes to the final reckoning with Barrera—and himself—that he always knew must happen.
The Cartel is a true-to-life story of honor and sacrifice, as one man tries to face down the devil without losing his soul. It is the story of the war on drugs and the men—and women—who wage it.
Don Winslow is the author of twenty-two acclaimed, award-winning international bestsellers, including the New York Times bestsellers The Force and The Border, the #1 international bestseller The Cartel, The Power of the Dog, Savages, and The Winter of Frankie Machine. Savages was made into a feature film by three-time Oscar-winning writer-director Oliver Stone. The Power of the Dog, The Cartel, and The Border sold to FX to air as a major television series, and The Force is soon to be a major motion picture from 20th Century Studios. A former investigator, antiterrorist trainer, and trial consultant, Winslow lives in California and Rhode Island.
Ray Porter is a prolific voice actor that has recorded for over 100 audio books and dozens of television series, video games and video shorts. Among his wide variety of audiobook credits are The Silver Linings Playbook, The Black Hole War, and the Joe Ledger series. He claims, “With every book I’ve done, I have found that the author has a voice and if I can just do my best to stay out of the way of that voice, then the writer will convey what he’s trying to put across. So for me, it’s really more about enabling the text and what the author is trying to say.”
Reviews
“I’m totally swept up. You can’t ask for more emotionally moving entertainment.”
“A first-rate edge-of-your-seat thriller.”
“A gut-punch of a novel. Big, ambitious, violent, and wildly entertaining…an absolute must-read.”
“Sensationally good.”
“This is the War and Peace of dope-war books. Tense, brutal, wildly atmospheric, stunningly plotted, deeply etched.”
“Overpowering.”
“High octane…The righteous indignation that fuels his tale of cops, cartels, and the near-apocalyptic havoc they can create is, to use a sadly appropriate word, addictive.”
“With corruption, violence, and a love story to boot, [The Cartel] is sure to have you grasping at the edge of your seat.”
“A magnum opus…[Winslow] is to the Mexican drug wars what James Ellroy is to LA noir.”
“One of the best thriller writers on the planet…Winslow has written an epic, gritty south-of-the-border Godfather for our time.”
“A sort of 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.”
“Here is fiction based on the best journalistic sources, with lively dialogue, timely revelations, and overall 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.”
“A grand and gripping epic novel.”
“A Wagernian epic of murder and vengeance..The Cartel is as much a work of meticulous journalism as artful fiction…[with] skillfully drawn characters.”
“An adrenaline rush, addictive as crack, and epic…Winslow deals in corruption, subversion, and revenge with an intensity that makes him irresistible.”
“This exhaustively researched novel elucidates not just the situation in Mexico but the consequences of our own disastrous forty-year ‘war on drugs.’”
“Horrifying in its accuracy, mesmerizing in its sweep and immediacy, brilliantly pace and placed…It’s all made intensely real by Ray Porter’s powerful performance.”
“A jarring glimpse into a reality about which many Americans remain blissfully unaware.”
“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…Clearly one of the most ambitious and most accomplished crime novels to appear in the last fifteen years.”
“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.”
“Ray Porter is an experienced narrator who does an expert job with Winslow’s complex plot and dozens of characters…Porter does many voices—depicting characters’ accents, genders, and ages very well. His pace is good, and his tone is intense without being overly dramatic.”
“[The Cartel] gives, perhaps, the clearest insight I’ve ever seen into the corruption that has nearly ruined the country of Mexico. Very tough book, but if you want to know what’s going on south of the border, it is a must read.”
“Lengthy, ambitious, and uncompromising.”
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