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For me, Don Winslow just one day appeared. His DEATH AND LIFE OF BOBBY Z was a wonderful book and I raced to find anything this guy had written. While I liked CALIFORNIA FIRE AND LIFE, I found some of it predictable. Still I've been waiting for his newest for a while, and have reread his earlier ones to fill in the time. I don't know what to say about THE POWER OF THE DOG. That it is well-written, yes, I can confirm that this man writes well. It's fast paced, it's well plotted. It's also, for me, extremely violent, and not a book I will ever pick up again. That's not condemnation, mind you. I happen to like re-reading books, but I've read a lot of mysteries that I don't want to re-read but am still glad to have read them. This one? Yes, but . . . Perhaps it's that there are so few good (even sympathetic) guys in this big (well over 500 pages) book. It's a sweeping international story about, essentially, the war on drugs, and the American response to it, along with the politics of it, the greed, the wealth, the evil. There are some stereotypes; the whore with the heart of gold, the good priest whose liberation theology take on things means he wants to save lives then save souls, the burnt-out Fed, the evil drug guys. Most of the good guys aren't very good; the cops, especially in Mexico, but all over the customs guys are bribable, venal, uncaring and pretty darn scummy. The Feds strike bargains with the devil to get to the other devil. While much of what is portrayed, sadly, we know, or suspect to be true (Iran-contra anyone?) it's still awfully depressing to see page after page of it. And so damn many people die in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Not that I was counting, but I cannot give you numbers. Fifty? Eighty? A hundred? There are massacres, and accidental shootings of bystanders, there are executions and tortures (which I skipped completely.) The numbers are awful and I feel terrible admitting that after a while, it became numbing to read another scene were someone pulls out a gun and just summarily shoots someone. It's easy to understand Drug Enforcement Administration guy Art Keller's bitterness; it's easy to see why the politics of promotion and getting along and getting ahead bother the idealists. It's harder to understand the involvement of a couple of young Irish kids who, while living in New York, commit a crime and end up in this morass. There are cops and federal agents, there are drug lords and their families. It's a multi-dimensional story that takes place over decades. I didn't quite know who to root for. That's not to say any of the bad guys are made good; they're often power-mad, sadistic, amoral all those things we assume some Colombian drug lord is. But there are so few people in this book with whom you'd want to spend five minutes. The best guys on our side are out for revenge, and often go outside the law to get it. While I felt for them, I tended to see how the lines were blurring more and more and for all the parties involved, ends usually justified means, whether it was openly breaking the law, committing crimes to end bigger ones, using someone's family (the excuse being something like "he's a major reason for the cocaine trade and everything that goes with it, so his family just has to matter less"). You get the idea. I know it sounds as if I'm rejecting this book as wrong-headed. Winslow is such a powerful writer that he brought me along. I did end up caring what happened to the gold-hearted whore. I did want to know whose side people were on -- people spied and changed sides a lot, either for money, or vengeance, or because they felt they had little choice. There was little loyalty and less trust. And I read and read and read. But I started sliding through about the last 100 pages; I didn't see the need for more blood and murder and death. I started getting confused -- there are dozens of characters in this book and if you put it down, which you almost have to, trying to remember all the connections can be a challenge. Do I recommend THE POWER OF THE DOG? Um, I do. But you need to have a strong stomach, and a tolerance for things like ambiguity and people doing the wrong things for what they believe to be the right reason. It's a very cynical book, by which I mean it shows that no one is untouched by greed, that there is so much ugliness and evil wins out when people are poor and weak (as so many are in Central and South America), that governments are complicit in the long-standing failures of drug wars and drug eradication programs. And it puts it all together with everyday politics -- assassinations and vote fraud, political bribery and greed, showing the heads of government departments and top cops on the payrolls of the worst kinds of scum. To many people, this isn't news. But it's still hard to read about. It's not the book I wish Don Winslow had written. I'm not saying he's wrong or even unfair. It's just such a depressing view of the world and one that maybe is a little to hard for me to take.
Reviewed by Andi Shechter, May 2005
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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