{"id":8728,"date":"2021-01-04T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-01-04T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8728"},"modified":"2021-01-03T20:45:46","modified_gmt":"2021-01-04T01:45:46","slug":"the-border","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8728","title":{"rendered":"The Border"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"The<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By Don Winslow \u2013 Whew! Another 700+ page book in 2020! Thanks to covid for opening up more reading time, though this book requires multiple kinds of stamina. Having read Winslow\u2019s previous book in this unforgettable trilogy, The Cartel<\/a><\/em>, and the late Charles Bowden\u2019s real-life story, Down by the River<\/a><\/em>, I was prepared for the brutality of the drug trade south of the border. And for American hypocrisy. And my own frustration. What I didn\u2019t expect was how much worse it has gotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most U.S. drug deaths come from illegally manufactured opioids (fentanyl), cocaine that is often laced with heroin or illicit fentanyl, and methamphetamines. All these drugs are manufactured and distributed by the Mexican cartels. They have so much money, they are a giant tail wagging the dog of the Mexican economy and the drug lords must look elsewhere for places to stash and launder their loot. Elsewhere, like the United States, where the size of the prize is just too tempting for major banks, like HSBC<\/a> and Wells Fargo<\/a>, and others to turn away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Winslow\u2019s character Ad\u00e1n Berrera is a stand-in for drug lord Joaqu\u00edn Guzm\u00e1n, it\u2019s around the disposition of the money that Winslow\u2019s new book turns into a mind-bending roman \u00e0 clef<\/em>. His main character, Art Keller, is now head of the DEA in the late days of the Obama Administration. On the horizon are the acolytes of surprise Republican presidential candidate and Twitter addict John Dennison, whose son-in-law, Jason Lerner, is a Manhattan real estate investment tycoon. Sound familiar? Real estate, Keller knows, is a prime sinkhole for large amounts of cash, and a deal Lerner is trying to negotiate needs cash fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a Sean Woods interview<\/a> for Rolling Stone<\/em>, Winslow said he has no information linking Trump or Kushner to drug money. However, he believes, the link doesn\u2019t strain credibility: \u201cWe live in an extremely corrupt era.\u201d He believed that creating another type of U.S. leader would have been much more disconcerting for readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every once in a while, Art Keller climbs up on his soapbox. He rails against the drug-prison industrial complex or the failure of U.S. immigration policy or the shortsightedness of attacking the supply side of the drug equation rather than the demand side or the incarceration of some 300,000 Americans<\/a>, mostly for petty drug crimes and the relative impunity of those, like the bankers and investors who facilitate the trade from the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But The Border<\/em> isn\u2019t just a polemic. It\u2019s a multi-layered thriller packed with adventure and compelling characters whose fates you\u2019ll care about. If this review concentrates on the issues rather than the literary devices of plot, characterization, setting, and the like, it\u2019s because those resonances with reality will really stay with you. They\u2019re what make this such an important book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We Americans turn a blind eye to the drug trade and the corrosive power of its financing at our peril. \u201cYou know,\u201d Winslow said, \u201cthe problem with writing these books is virtually everything in them really happened.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Order The Border<\/em> from Amazon here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Don Winslow \u2013 Whew! Another 700+ page book in 2020! Thanks to covid for opening up more reading time, though this book requires multiple kinds of stamina. Having read Winslow\u2019s previous book in this unforgettable trilogy, The Cartel, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Border - Don Winslow's stunning conclusion to The Power of the Dog trilogy. ","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,53,366,126,35,32],"tags":[1794,1119,1793,429,1792],"class_list":["post-8728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-criminal","category-drama","category-reading-2","category-real-life","category-thriller","tag-carterls","tag-don-winslow","tag-drug-trade","tag-mexico","tag-the-border"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2gM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8730,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8728\/revisions\/8730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}