The Cartel

From the acclaimed author of The Power of the Dog—and continuing the gripping, harrowing story of the Mexican American drug wars that fueled it—comes an electrifying new novel that spans a deadly decade and brings this tale of greed and corruption, revenge and justice, heroism and deceit into the present moment.It’s 2004. El Federación, the most powerful drug organization in the world, has been exploded, and the Mexican drug trade has settled out into several cartels that exist in a state of tenuous accord. The patron of El Federación, Adán Barrera, is in solitary in a San Diego prison. Art Keller, the DEA agent who put him there—and killed his two brothers—is living at a New Mexican monastery, tending bees; the solitude and simple truths of the place a powerful antidote to his former “life of lies.” But when Barrera negotiates a deal that lets him serve out his time in a Mexican prison, a series of events is set off that undermines whatever accord existed between the cartels, and a war of unprecedented scale and viciousness erupts.With Berrera back in the world he once owned and willing to do whatever he can to own again, Keller plunges back in the game, playing, as he always did, by his own rules. What ensues is an all-out war with players—honest and corrupt, victim and perp—on every level of society and on both sides of the border. But it is also Keller’s personal war on drugs, his own addiction, and the question that hovers above every move he makes: Is he looking for justice or for revenge?