Review: "The Border" by Don Winslow

I don’t much go in for book series’, with my reading habits making it hard to latch onto arcs over multiple books (I do not read more than one book by a certain author during a calendar year), but a few have made their way into my heart. Two come immediately to mind: one is Justin Cronin’s The Passage Trilogy and the other is Don Winslow’s drug epic, which I like to call the Art Keller Saga, beginning with The Power of the Dog, continuing with The Cartel and ending with this year’s The Border. I was entertained, horrified and deeply moved following the story of this flawed man who was there at the beginning of America’s misguided drug war and stuck with it as it evolved and morphed into a more ravenous and merciless monster with Adan Barrera as its head. If you have followed it too, you will enjoy this final part of it, the longest at a massive 716 pages, pulling from the headlines, narco hearsay and Winslow’s vivid and rhythmic imagination as Art Keller, exhausted, spent and pieces of his soul picked away like rotted flesh, still having hope that all of it will be worth it. It begins, like the other three with a prologue of things to come before stepping back to the end of the first novel where (SPOILERS) Keller walks out of the Guatemalan jungle, the Zetas finally defeated and Keller finally ridding the world of Barrera. After this, one of those who financed the covert mission to destroy the Zetas invites Keller to head up the DEA. He takes the job, knowing that even though Barrera is dead (despite the signs that crop up claiming he is alive) the vacuum left in the Sinaloa Cartel will be quickly filled, this time by the sons of those who started the whole bloody empire. And much like The Cartel, the book is not only focused on the story of Art Keller battling the cartels but stories completely separate from this blood feud, featuring a junkie undone by opioid addiction, an immigrant trying to avoid gang life as he makes his way from Guatemala to New York City and of course John Dennison, the pale horse candidate of the 2016 election, vowing to make America Great Again and build that wall, even though it is his own party who find themselves in the pocket of the cartels. Like all of Winslow’s books, it has a propulsive pace, with action scenes that feel authentic and over the top at the same time, under laid with a great passion for the subject ta hand; it’s ecstatic highs and horrid faults. If the Power of the Dog was about regret and The Cartel was about forgiveness, I’d surmise The Border is a book about hope, a hope that stems from the worst circumstances, a hope that stays a live and well lit when everything else seems to be falling apart. Winslow believes in this deeply, I think, and so do I. If this is the last book I will surely miss Art Keller and hope he has found some peace. 

Rating: 5/5