Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Power of the Novel, 20 Nov 2006
With 'The Power of the Dog', Don Winslow has written one of the best books I have ever read. It tells the story of the Mexican drug trade through the 70s to present day. Not only do you get Mexican gangsters, but also the Italian Mafia, Irish, Cubans, corrupt Mexican cops, covert CIA ops and the DEA.
This rich brew of characters and influences makes the book both action packed and riveting to read. The novel has four major characters that drive the plot forward over 30 years and also has plenty of supporting characters who have differing fates.
Winslow does not shy away from the violence of the drug trade and also seems to have researched very well giving the book an informed feel. The characters are fantastic; Winslow makes all of them three dimensional so even the nicest character may get sucked into evil. The style of writing and story itself is excellent throughout and will leave you gripped.
Read this book.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome, 9 Nov 2006
Wow - this book has jumped straight to the top of my favourites list. It has it all - drugs, sex, violence, politics, religion. It has Mexican drug cartels, Italian and Irish Mafia, veteran DEA and CIA agents, hookers and priests, communist guerrillas and high-level government cover-ups. Its like a cross between Scarface and Killing Pablo, charting the rise of the fictional Barrera brothers from street hoodlums to billionaire drug lords, and the catalogue of torture and killing left in their wake. Central to this is the obsessive DEA agent Art Keller, who pulls out all the stops to bring them down, battling the bandits and his own conscience as he discovers the truth about the real war on drugs.
Every chapter has a running gun battle, an interrogation scene, a double-crossing or a brutal murder. At times it even feels like there's too much action, but this doesn't detract from the gripping and complex plot. It's huge in scope, spanning 30 years and several countries, interlinking different characters and organisations and playing them off against each other, keeping us guessing until its bloody conclusion.
Wimslow's prose is great, eloquent enough but sprinkled with street slang and gangster-speak. No flowery language, just straight to the point and hard as nails. The violence is shocking and frequent (torture scenes leave little to the imagination). This is undoubtedly a blokes' book, a testosterone-packed powerhouse of a novel, and certainly not for the faint-hearted.
My favourite book used to be The Godfather. Not any more. Power of the Dog is even better, and as the front cover states, a future classic.
Essential reading. 5 stars.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Gory Brew, 25 Jul 2006
This is a cracker of a novel, ambitious in its scope and multi-layered in plot and characterisation. It's quite retro in it's subject matter, recalling the days of Nicaragua, the Sandinistas, the Cold War communists, the American Mafia and then throws the Irish, the Neo-cons, the Mexican banditos and even Opus Dei into the mix. The plot thunders along and the violence levels are acute, recalling the worst excesses of James Ellroy or James Lee Burke and sometimes verging toward horror as opposed to crime fiction. But it's well-written stuff and the author is able to carry it off, managing to shock and disturb the reader into considering what really did go on with the Right Wing Death Squads in Central America, never mind drugs and the Columbians. The only weak part of the novel was found in the female characters who I found to be a bit one-dimensional in the uber-macho world created. Apart from that, this is a great read and I too will be reading more of this author's output in future.
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