He weaves in multiple narratives and current events, taking us from the barrios of Guatemala and a pair of children fleeing to America, to Staten Island and a junky couple living in a van. As always, Winslow, who in a past life was private investigator, takes the action from the DEA offices and Sinaloa villas right down to the streets, with dealers, cops and junkies enduring the results of decisions made on high. Familiar characters from Power of the Dog and The Cartel return. Art Keller, the aging federal drug warrior, has unexpectedly risen to head the DEA. His El Chapo character, Adán Barrera, the head of the Sinaloa cartel, is dead, leaving the next generation of narcos in a brutal struggle for power.

Winslow, 65, picks up where he left off with The Cartel. Like its predecessors, 2004’s Power of the Dog (covering 1975-2004) and 2015’s The Cartel (2004-2014), The Border is a sprawling, blood-soaked saga and cements Winslow, in the words of one his heroes, the writer James Ellroy, as “the master of the dope war novel. He takes on the Trump administration directly, creating a fictional candidate, then president, who stokes racist fears of Mexicans, campaigns on “building the wall” and, along with his venal son-in-law, gets caught up in a shady real estate deal involving Cartel money.

Clocking in at over 700 pages, it is his most overtly political installment yet. This month he delivers the Border, the fiery conclusion of his sweeping drug-war trilogy. Novelist Don Winslow has spent the last 20 years of his life absorbing more news about Mexico’s narco wars than most of us could stomach.

Don winslow the cartel series