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The Power Of The Dog (2006)

The Power of the Dog (2006)

Book Info

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Genre
Rating
4.32 of 5 Votes: 3
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ISBN
1400096936 (ISBN13: 9781400096930)
Language
English
Publisher
vintage

About book The Power Of The Dog (2006)

Everything about Don Winslow’s The Power of the Dog feels familiar. As I read it, pop culture artifacts as different as Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, and the techno-thrillers of Tom Clancy popped into my head. The dramatis personae is almost a list of archetypes: the hard-charging, straight-edged DEA agent; the hard-charging agent's charmless boss; and the urbane drug lord who gradually gets his hands dirtier and dirtier. This is a novel where you can see all the moving parts, but it’s constructed so well, that it never matters. From page one, you are reading downhill.The Power of a the Dog is a sweeping, 542-page epic of the drug trade. It tells a fictional story that is framed by real life events. It begins in 1975, with a close-in look at the infamous Operation Condor, and ends in 2004, when the War on Drugs has taken on a new, post-9/11 look. In between…some very bad things happen. Trying to describe the plot is an unnecessary exercise that I won’t attempt except at the most macro level. The backbone of the narrative is the struggle between Art Keller, the straight-edged DEA agent I mentioned above, and Adan Barrera, the Michael Corleone of the Mexican Cartels. Keller is obsessed with bringing down Adan’s organization, El Federación. This simple motive is the one constant in an otherwise sprawling book, which includes characters like Sean Callan, an Irish hitman with a load of guilt (because he’s Catholic, duh!); Nora, a high-class hooker with a heart of gold (naturally); a mobster nicknamed Peaches (because he likes peaches); an incorruptible priest named Father Parada, who reminds me of the “cool” young Jesuits I knew in college (he smokes and he curses!); and Ramos, the last good cop in Mexico, who has a preternatural ability to find the bad guys (he chews an unlit cigar, so you know he’s badass). All these are stock types. Winslow tries to develop them, but they never leap off the page as three-dimensional humans. Keller, for instance, is half-Mexican, comes from barrios, and is suitably tortured by his past actions and mistakes. Despite this, his unbending rectitude makes him the least interesting star in the constellation. He is just one more haunted cop in the litany of fiction’s haunted cops. Many of these people die, some quite horribly. Their deaths affected me on an intellectual level (plot twist!), but never an emotional one. They were just names, nicknames, and affectations, like Tarantino creations. Cool, yes. Memorable, yes. Psychologically and emotionally realized, not quite. (One character, who I will not name, plays a long con that is only believable if you do not imagine these people having a life outside the page). Mentioning this is almost beside the point. Once you start reading, you’re going to finish. Pointing out clichés in the characters is like bemoaning the view from the top of a roller coaster. What matters is how all these characters interact, use each other, con each other, hurt each other. Winslow writes at a very high level. There are incredible set pieces. A mob hit. A shootout in the streets. A raid by drug enforcement agents. Even the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. The Power of the Dog is packed with memorable scenes. It is also surprisingly powerful. In his prologue, Winslow drops us into his story with the image of a dead child. No explanation, no context. Hundreds of pages later, he’ll circle back to this scene, and the meaning he develops by finally placing it within the framework of the story is ingenious. Apart from the frenetic action, Winslow also takes care to show us the big picture of the drug trade. He bounces from location to location to show us the entire pipeline. We move from Central American jungles to Mexico City to U.S.-Mexican border crossings to New York City. (This is referred to in the novel as the Mexican Trampoline). He shows you the interaction between Mexican organized crime, and American organized crime (here focusing on the Mafia, rather than street gangs), along with the complicity of the Mexican government and the meddling, regime-destabilizing antics of the U.S. government. The Power of the Dog manages to seamlessly transition between scope and intimacy, to show us both the bigger picture, and to give us a gritty feel for the smaller details. I read this book right around the time my brother-in-law died. It’s not what I would’ve chosen (filled with sadness, death, and hopelessness), but it was at hand. It’s a testament to Winslow’s storytelling abilities that it captured and held my attention during an impossible time. That said, this is not escapist fiction. It is far too brutal. This is one of the most graphic books I’ve ever read, and that’s saying something, since my prurient interest leads me to seek these things out. There is a heavy quotient of murder and torture, all described in great detail. But Winslow is not working in the tradition of grand guignol. He is not stylizing the violence. He does not make it so over-the-top as to render the bloodshed harmless. To the contrary, the things Winslow describes occur far too frequently on the U.S.-Mexican border, where cartels kidnap and decapitate to send their messages.(I cannot forget an image I once saw posted by the New York Times, of two consular workers murdered in their car in Ciudad Juarez. The picture showed the front of the car, the windshield dappled with gunshot holes. There is a man and woman inside - a husband and wife - both leaning towards the passenger side door, still buckled into their seats. Both are covered in blood. The woman was pregnant. Their daughter in the backseat was unhurt. Fiction cannot devise horror to surpass the realities of this sad world). The Power of the Dog is a relentless indictment of the “War of Drugs.” Sometimes this is effective, as when Winslow is showing us the mistakes as they’re made. At other times, when Keller gets on his high-horse, it can be like a screed. Interestingly, Winslow’s critique on American drug policy seems to focus on suppression and interdiction. Keller is constantly in conflict with timid bureaucrats who won’t go far enough to get the bad guys; or with a Federal Government that is willing to turn a blind eye to inter-cartel housecleaning, as long as it decreases the gross amount of product coming across the border. Winslow doesn’t seem to be looking for a paradigm change; instead, he wants interdiction done better. The reason I find this interesting is that focus on the supply side is a fool’s game. You are never going to “win” by going after the cartels, and especially not after their pawns. Every victory over a supplier simply ups the price, making the risk of drug-running even more attractive. The focus has to be on the demand side of the equation. It means focusing on drug treatment and addiction north of the Rio Grande. The actual end-result of drug smuggling – the experience of the user – is never mentioned in The Power of the Dog. This is rather glaring in a novel that encompasses just about everything else. Of course, this “solution” to the drug problem is far easier said than done. I work with drug users. There might not be anything on earth quite as frustrating. Getting people clean is a long, expensive, intensive, expensive, difficult, and expensive process that embodies the notion of one step forward, two (or three, or four) steps back. Did I mention it is expensive? It certainly doesn’t make for sexy fiction, or good public relations visuals. Likely, a massive demand-side resolution will never be implemented. Anyway, that’s beside the point. This is a great work of fiction. Unfortunately, it derives from ugly truth.

Wow, talk about one epic, sprawling novel! I can’t remember the last time I read a book that was this broad based in scope, when dealing with the subject presented to the reader.THE POWER OF THE DOG is all about the war on drugs, primarily the Mexican cartel side of the war on drugs. Told from the perspectives of a DEA agent, a drug lord, a priest, a hooker and a Irish hitman, this story takes you through the entire web of drugs, from the meager beginnings of the DEA and it’s war waged by then president Richard Nixon in the 1970’s, to the days of the late 1990’s and billions of dollars of cash flowing through an intricate web of deceit, betrayal, murder, kidnapping, governmental manipulation, the Mob and so much more! Looking at all of this on paper, it would be easy to think that this story, spanning the globe throughout three decades, might be convoluted, but it’s actually not at all. Author Don Winslow masterfully tells a very deep and thorough story that gripped me in its mammoth jaws right from the first chapter. The way he takes real life scenarios, like NAFTA for example, and makes it a believable part of his fictional story, is nothing short of genius. This is like Breaking Bad, but broader and with a variety of drugs. Despite being undoubtedly one of the very best books I have read this year, if I had to be critical, the only real downside I could give to the book is that the characters are not deep. Some are better fleshed out than others, but certain characters I would have liked to have seen expanded upon a little further. Winslow doesn’t always take a lot of time to let us get into the characters intricacies and deeper passions, and usually this would be a bigger issue with me and a book, but with the amount of superb storytelling on all other fronts of this book, I can actually look past this here. There might have been a few small lulls in the proceedings and action of the story, but never was I not on the edge of my seat during the books 542 pages.I’m really surprised that I had never heard of this book until last week. With how good this book is, I would expect it to be on the lips and tongues of many people who enjoy crime books. Perhaps I just wasn’t looking in the right places? I actually stumbled upon it by accident while searching for the new book to read. While looking around at books recently at Barnes and Noble, I saw a cover that caught my eye to a book entitled THE CARTEL. After reading the synopsis, I really wanted to read it and only then did I hear about THE POWER OF THE DOG, as it is the predecessor to THE CARTEL, so I bought it and boy am I ever glad I did. I can’t stop here, now I MUST read THE CARTEL!If you like exceptionally dense books that weave a fictional story through real, true life happenings in our world, a story so expertly written and captivating that you’ll wonder how the author could concoct such novel, then definitely check this out. I easily give this book my highest recommendation and a 5/5!

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Comprare libri e poi aspettare anni prima di leggerli a volte può essere controproducente: Il potere del cane di Don Winslow è dal 2009 che si trova sugli scaffali della mia libreria, e nel frattempo lo vedevo sempre più collezionare voti altissimi e recensioni entusiaste. Un libro che mi *doveva* piacere (era piaciuto a tutti!), e forse questa aspettativa gli ha giocato contro, perché mi ha spinto a guardarlo con occhio iper-critico. O forse passare da una striscia di letture più "leggere" a una così fortemente drammatica si è rivelato uno choc difficilmente superabile (mi ero abituata a minore complessità).Impossibile tentare di sintetizzare la complicatissima trama se non riducendola proprio all'osso: l'infinito duello tra un agente della DEA, Art Keller (uno degli esempi più classici di eroe solo contro tutto e tutti), e i padroni di uno dei più grossi cartelli della droga messicani, i Barrera, che si svolge su molteplici fronti e attraverso oltre due decenni, tra vittorie parziali e sconfitte interlocutorie dall'una e dall'altra parte, brutalità inconcepibili, doppiezze, accordi, trame politiche. Coinvolti in questa gigantesca e interminabile battaglia finiscono altri personaggi, un killer irlandese, un prelato, una prostituta, mafiosi ma anche e soprattutto i vertici della CIA, visto che in Sudamerica la guerra alla droga nasconde innumerevoli altri obiettivi, fini, ambizioni.Sarebbe un copione già pronto per Hollywood e in effetti si legge come se si stesse guardando un kolossal d'azione sul grande schermo: con ciò intendo dire che è tutto eseguito magistralmente, la tensione è sempre alta, ogni scena è orchestrata alla perfezione e si incastra assieme alle altre in un meccanismo studiatissimo in cui nulla avviene per caso, la sequenza preparazione-crisi-risoluzione è rispettata e ripetuta più volte (sono le tappe della lunga guerra di cui sopra), rimani sbalordito (dal fatto che la mente dell'autore sia riuscita a governare e dirigere una tale complessità) e col fiato sospeso, però non hai un vero e proprio coinvolgimento emotivo e affettivo coi personaggi... nonostante alcuni snodi della trama siano meno plausibili e sembrino studiati a tavolino proprio per aumentare la melodrammaticità della storia (il felicissimo matrimonio del poliziotto-eroe che si dissolve in tre pagine, l'infallibile killer che nasconde il mitra... sotto il letto, così che l'amatissima fidanzata per la quale sta cercando di cambiare vita lo trova subito spazzando e lo lascia...). *Quindi, storia molto bella (lo stile di scrittura di Winslow un po' meno: già non mi stuzzicavano molto gli altri suoi romanzi, ad esempio Le belve, adesso penso che sia ancora più difficile che io li legga), ma personaggi che sembrano attori sulla scena... Non "soffri" realmente assieme a loro perché non sembrano "veri" e hai sempre la vaga impressione che a un certo punto sentirai la voce da trailer che dice "Russell Crowe è... Art Keller, Charlize Theron è... Nora Hayden... IL POTERE DEL CANE... nei cinema". Per dire, una reazione come quella che ho avuto all'INFAUSTA PAGINA 562 de Il petalo cremisi e il bianco (quando ho dovuto interrompere la lettura e mi sono aggirata piagnucolando per la stanza per circa cinque minuti), qui non era pensabile. I personaggi, anche importanti, muoiono sì come le mosche, ma la cosa viene registrata senza troppa partecipazione, incalzati come siamo dall'azione adrenalinica o impegnati a seguire gli intrighi geopolitici (questo libro è una manna per i complottisti, ha tutti i cattivi "giusti": CIA, Stati Uniti, Vaticano, Opus Dei, Israele...). Forse, era precisa intenzione dell'autore evitare ogni sentimentalismo (ma quel che dico più sopra in parte sembra smentirlo), forse è un modo per sottolineare quanto la perdita di vite umane diventi normale e trascurabile amministrazione in questi contesti. Forse. O forse l'autore non sa farci diventare "tutt'uno" con le sue creature.Difficile spiegare questa mia sensazione, che inoltre probabilmente ha davvero poco senso, perché... in che modo i personaggi dei libri sarebbero più "veri" di quelli del cinema?C'è un altro piccolo dettaglio che ha giocato a sfavore di questo libro, ma si tratta di una mia personalissima idiosincrasia: quando leggo romanzi con i verbi al presente indicativo mi viene sempre l'ansia, come se il personaggio "aspettasse" me per andare avanti! E oltre tutto in questi casi il tono dell'autore suona "brusco" e sbrigativo: osservazioni assolutamente soggettive e di scarso valore argomentativo, certo, ma che cercano di spiegare come mai mi senta sempre "a disagio", lievemente irritata e sfavorevolmente colpita quando incontro libri che utilizzano questa tecnica: il passato remoto avrà un sapore più antiquato, ma mi pare più adatto alla narrazione. Naturalmente, essendo questo un libro di 700 e passa pagine, dopo un po' finisci con l'abituarti e non ti sembra più tanto strano.Forse sono stata condizionata negativamente da alcune recensioni lette prima di iniziare, da questo articolo su un altro romanzo dello stesso autore (recensione positiva, sì, ma alcune annotazioni qua e là mi avevano lasciato poco convinta), dallo stile che non è riuscito a conquistarmi, fatto sta che ho preso il libro in mano più scettica di quanto non lo avrei fatto anni fa, subito dopo averlo acquistato. La mezza stelletta in più l'aveva praticamente persa per strada con l'ultimo centinaio di pagine (veramente brutto), ma alla fine ho ritenuto che un 3/5 sarebbe stato fin troppo severo: ripeto, lo sto punendo perché forse per una serie di circostanze mi sono auto-indotta da sola a "non farmelo piacere troppo". Non so spiegare bene, a volte basta la predisposizione negativa a fregarti e con certi libri, sulla carta perfetti, non "scatta" quel non so che; capisco perfettamente perché Il potere del cane piaccia tantissimo, cavolo, sarebbe dovuto piacere di più anche a me. Quindi, diamogli pure 3,5/5. Ma è un voto che tiene conto della "stima" più che dell'effettivo gradimento.* Tranquilli, non sono parti fondamentali della trama: leggendo questo libro avevo ben presente questa vignetta, e ogni volta che andavo all'ultima pagina per controllare l'indice ero terrorizzata dall'eventualità che l'occhio mi cadesse sulle ultime righe dell'epilogo!3,5/5http://moloch981.wordpress.com/2012/1...
—Moloch

This book is a far-reaching epic that covers over 25 years in the lives of numerous characters who start out having nothing to do with each other and in some cases never do encounter each other. The thing they have in common, the reason that this book tells all of their various stories, is the drug war. This is an ambitious chronicle of America's War On Drugs, beginning with a successful covert effort to take out Mexico's reigning druglord in the wake of the Vietnam War. At this point, the government assumes that Mexican drug trafficking is a thing of the past, and that they can concentrate their efforts on other countries in Latin America. Art Keller, an agent of the newly-formed DEA who, unlike most of the law enforcement types in the DEA, has a CIA background, thinks this train of thought is deeply flawed. As the book goes on, it will prove him right. But it's a long road from those opening scenes to the final climactic moment in which all that's been set up finally comes together, and the book takes its time getting there. We are given complicated portraits of many different characters in the meantime, from an Irish hitman from New York to a California prostitute to a left-wing archbishop in Guadalajara, all of whom play important roles in the plot. This book has less of a storyline than a complicated web, in which the paths of many different characters spread out and converge at various points. I don't really want to get heavily into describing the plot, as much for reasons of space as anything, but I will say that all of the characters are well-described and sympathetic, and all of their stories are equally gripping and enjoyable. What can be the toughest part, in fact, is deciding who to root for. Often, central characters who were at another point in the book friends are pitted against each other, and as both have been sympathetically described, the reader sympathizes with both. And this isn't the only complicating factor--making it even tougher to decide who to root for is that none of the characters in the book (with the possible exception of the left-wing archbishop) have clean hands. All of them do morally ambiguous or even outright terrible things at one point or another.And this brings us to the question of Don Winslow's overall goal here. As epic and ambitious as "Power Of The Dog" appears to be purely in terms of its goals as a novel, its scope is even wider and more ambitious than that. Put plainly, Winslow is using this fictional chronicle to tell the story of America's drug war, its various inconsistent motivations and covert actions, and explain exactly why all of the players involved in the struggle did what they did. While a non-fiction chronicle would be more trustworthy in terms of factual details, it's my opinion that "The Power Of The Dog" succeeds in communicating the complicated nature of the drug war, from both the American and Latin American government perspective and from that of the druglords themselves. Furthermore, it succeeds in making the various motivations of all involved clear and understandable. But as I said before, no one's hands are clean. I personally find the idea of America retaining an anti-Communist agenda in their covert interferences with government of various Latin American countries despicable, especially in light of its ramifications for the working class of those countries. On the other hand, knowing that left-wing revolutionary groups who did care about the workers and making sure they were treated justly often funded their efforts through the sale and distribution of cocaine and other drugs doesn't make me feel very good at all. And knowing that the CIA and other covert government agencies facilitated drug-dealing in the U.S. in order to make it easier to manipulate the political situation in Latin America is pretty appalling too. I know that these things happened from my various readings, but "Power Of The Dog"s fictional narrative helps bring it home for me in a way that no footnoted statement in a Wikipedia entry can.I've written about Don Winslow before, concerning his excellent novel "California Fire And Life", from 1999. That book still seems great to me having read "The Power Of The Dog", but "Power Of The Dog" is obviously on a completely different level than is "California Fire And Life". It's Winslow's followup to that book, but there was a 6 year period inbetween the publishing of the two books, and it's understandable in light of just how much work must have gone into the writing of "Power Of The Dog". Fortunately, it was effort well spent, and anyone who reads this book will come away having gotten the kind of reading experience that one always hopes for but is rarely fortunate enough to find. It's the kind of book that, when one puts it down, makes picking up any other book seem trivial. "The Power Of The Dog" demands a decent amount of quiet reflection before moving on, and may very well change the way you look at America's War On Drugs. It will definitely be one of the better reading experiences you'll have, this or any year. If you haven't read it, do so now. Trust me.
—Andrew

The Power of the Dog, by Don Winslow, a-minus, narrated by Ray Porter, produced by Blackstone Audio, downloaded from audible.com.Publisher’s note:This explosive novel of the drug trade takes you deep inside a world riddled with corruption, betrayal, and bloody revenge.Art Montana is an obsessiveDEA agent. The Barrera brothers are heirs to a drug empire. Nora Hayden is a jaded teenager who becomes a high-class hooker. Father Parada is a powerfuland incorruptible Catholic priest. Callan is an Irish kid from Hell's Kitchen who grows up to be a merciless hit man. All of them are trapped in the worldof the Mexican drug Federación.From the streets of New York City to Mexico City and Tijuana to the jungles of Central America, this is the war on drugslike you've never seen it. This is probably one of the darkest books I’ve ever read. Nothing is as it seems. Everyone is using everyone else for their own ends. The DEA agent, Arthur Keller, is obsessed with getting rid of the drug trade, and especially with ridding himself of the gang who killed his friend, a policeman. While this book does detail the earthquake in Mexico City in the ‘80’s, you could really say that this whole book is one in which your feet are never on the ground and you are always being thrown topsy-turvy. The only thing you can say for sure is that in the drug wars no one wins. The book is extremely well written, including everyone’s sardonic thoughts.
—Kathleen Hagen

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