The Power of the Dog is a 2005 crime/thriller novel by Don Winslow, based on the DEA's involvement with the War on Drugs. The book was published after six years of writing and research by the author.

Plot summary

The novel describes three decades of the United States war on drugs by following several main characters: The DEA agent Art Keller, Adán Barrera, who controls large parts of the drug trade from Mexico to the United States of America, the prostitute Nora Hayden and Sean Callan, a gangster from the streets of New York. Keller becomes obsessed with the Barrera family after they tortured and killed an DEA agent in Mexico. Trying to revenge his colleague Keller discovers massive involvement of the US and the Mexican government in drug trade operations. The CIA prevents him from taking revenge on the drug cartels to combat left activists in Latin America.

Winslow shows the brutality of the war of drugs with very graphic scenes involving torture and massacres. He also explains with many details how the drug trade worked and how the different organisations collaborated to achieve their respective goals—from the Mexican drug cartels to the Vatican.



From the internationally best-selling author of the acclaimed novel The Power of the Dog comes The Cartel, a gripping, true-to-life, ripped-from-the-headlines epic 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 story of revenge, 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.