The New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio
The Border is a mighty book, overflowing with dramatic subplots populated by characters who come and go and are killed off with alarming frequency…Winslow writes like someone who's been to hell and back and can't wait to talk about the experience…Whether good, bad or altogether hopeless, his characters are full of life and hard to forget…Although Winslow's plot is epic-scaled and intended to raise serious issues about the drug trade as a major American industry, it's those multiple generations of crazy narco families that really make his case.
The New York Times - Janet Maslin
…[a] stunner of a conclusion…Winslow means to journey deep into a new kind of hell this time, and to suggest that his readers recognize the sensation. This is a book for dark, rudderless times, an immersion into fear and chaos. It conjures more lawlessness, dishonesty, conniving, brutality and power mania than both of the earlier books put together…Winslow describes sting operations with immersive, heart-grabbing intensity. You don't read these books; you live in them…[Winslow] is fluent in many [languages], and The Border once again shows off those talents. There's slang, of course…There is cop. There is politician, hit man, high roller. There is psycho—always a favorite, and always handy in the circles in which these books have traveled. "We're soul mates," one character says to another. "In the sense that neither of us has one." The Border ends with another idea about the soul. "There is no wall that divides the human soul between its best impulses and its worst." Two classic trilogies, The Godfather and now this one, are built upon it.
Publishers Weekly
★ 02/25/2019
In bestseller Winslow’s stunning conclusion to his monumental Cartel trilogy (after 2015’s The Cartel), Art Keller, now the head of the DEA, has spent decades waging a relentless campaign against the Mexican drug cartels. It’s now late 2012, and Adán Barrera, Keller’s longtime nemesis and the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, is missing and presumed dead. Violence soon escalates as the fractured remnants of Barrera’s organization struggle against a host of new players vying for control of the drug trade. The bottom has fallen out of the marijuana market, and heroin has once again become the drug of choice for a new generation of Americans hooked on opiate painkillers. When fentanyl, a lethal new synthetic opiate, hits the streets, not only are poor minority users dying but well-to-do white kids are overdosing in record numbers. Keller knows like nobody else that America’s “war on drugs” has been a complete failure, and he opts for a daring new clandestine approach: instead of targeting the suppliers in Mexico, he goes after the money in the States. With clear-eyed determination and an almost Shakespearean grasp of human nature, Winslow takes readers on an unforgettable journey. Agent: Shane Salerno, Story Factory. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
A stunning and timely conclusion to Don Winslow’s drug-war trilogy. . . This is a book for dark, rudderless times, an immersion into fear and chaos. . . You don’t read these books; you live in them.” — New York Times
“Mr. Winslow writes gripping action sequences and wields statistics like a crusading journalist. Grand in scope, audacious in its political portraits, convincing in its socio-economic arguments and humane to the core, The Border is not only a formidable thriller but an important and provocative work.” — Wall Street Journal
“I’m totally swept up. You can’t ask for more emotionally moving entertainment. . . Everyone in America—left, right, and center—should read this book. It’s social fiction to rival Tom Wolfe and John Steinbeck. Focused, angry, suspenseful, occasionally hilarious, always hugely entertaining. . . A harsh, important book.” — Stephen King
“These angry, often heartbreaking books stand as the definitive fictional rendering of an ongoing modern tragedy. . . . The Border guides us through a savage, wholly believable world. The result is a powerful—and painful—journey through a contemporary version of hell. Rarely has hell been so compelling.” — Washington Post
“If Dostoevsky slung dope, he might have written the fierce morality tale that Winslow began with The Power of the Dog . . . Truth compacted into narrative by way of meticulous research. . . Eerily prescient and scathing. . . quite simply the most important crime saga in modern literature.” — Arizona Republic
“The Border is intricate, mean and swift, a sprawling canvass of characters. . . Granular detail and sharp dialogue have made his drug war trilogy propulsive and compelling. . . The stories unravel broken lives caught in a mesmerizing mosaic fueled by addiction and haunted by bloodshed.” — Los Angeles Times
“A landmark moment in crime fiction. . . . It is Winslow’s remarkable ability to translate the utter fiasco of our 50-year War on Drugs into the most wrenching of human stories, tragedy seemingly without end, that gives this novel its unparalleled power.” — Booklist [starred review]
“Peak page-turner. . . Will rattle your soul in those early-morning hours as you come face to face with all the corruption and depravity in the world. . . The crime-fiction equivalent of The Stand—the kind of compulsive Stephen King-esque epic that captivates and horrifies.” — Globe & Mail
“The Cartel and The Force were high water marks in the genre in terms of ambition and reach, and Winslow has excelled again. . . This is Winslow at his sensational best.” — Financial Times
“Don Winslow’s epic trilogy about America’s longest war comes to a powerful and troubling conclusion.” — Associated Press
“With clear-eyed determination and an almost Shakespearean grasp of human nature, Winslow takes readers on an unforgettable journey.” — Publishers Weekly [starred review]
Stephen King
I’m totally swept up. You can’t ask for more emotionally moving entertainment. . . Everyone in America—left, right, and center—should read this book. It’s social fiction to rival Tom Wolfe and John Steinbeck. Focused, angry, suspenseful, occasionally hilarious, always hugely entertaining. . . A harsh, important book.
|Los Angeles Times
The Border is intricate, mean and swift, a sprawling canvass of characters. . . Granular detail and sharp dialogue have made his drug war trilogy propulsive and compelling. . . The stories unravel broken lives caught in a mesmerizing mosaic fueled by addiction and haunted by bloodshed.
Wall Street Journal
Mr. Winslow writes gripping action sequences and wields statistics like a crusading journalist. Grand in scope, audacious in its political portraits, convincing in its socio-economic arguments and humane to the core, The Border is not only a formidable thriller but an important and provocative work.
Booklist [starred review]
A landmark moment in crime fiction. . . . It is Winslow’s remarkable ability to translate the utter fiasco of our 50-year War on Drugs into the most wrenching of human stories, tragedy seemingly without end, that gives this novel its unparalleled power.
Associated Press
Don Winslow’s epic trilogy about America’s longest war comes to a powerful and troubling conclusion.
Washington Post
These angry, often heartbreaking books stand as the definitive fictional rendering of an ongoing modern tragedy. . . . The Border guides us through a savage, wholly believable world. The result is a powerful—and painful—journey through a contemporary version of hell. Rarely has hell been so compelling.
New York Times
A stunning and timely conclusion to Don Winslow’s drug-war trilogy. . . This is a book for dark, rudderless times, an immersion into fear and chaos. . . You don’t read these books; you live in them.
Globe & Mail
Peak page-turner. . . Will rattle your soul in those early-morning hours as you come face to face with all the corruption and depravity in the world. . . The crime-fiction equivalent of The Stand—the kind of compulsive Stephen King-esque epic that captivates and horrifies.
Financial Times
The Cartel and The Force were high water marks in the genre in terms of ambition and reach, and Winslow has excelled again. . . This is Winslow at his sensational best.
Arizona Republic
If Dostoevsky slung dope, he might have written the fierce morality tale that Winslow began with The Power of the Dog . . . Truth compacted into narrative by way of meticulous research. . . Eerily prescient and scathing. . . quite simply the most important crime saga in modern literature.
Los Angeles Times
The Border is intricate, mean and swift, a sprawling canvass of characters. . . Granular detail and sharp dialogue have made his drug war trilogy propulsive and compelling. . . The stories unravel broken lives caught in a mesmerizing mosaic fueled by addiction and haunted by bloodshed.
Financial Times
The Cartel and The Force were high water marks in the genre in terms of ambition and reach, and Winslow has excelled again. . . This is Winslow at his sensational best.
Wall Street Journal
Mr. Winslow writes gripping action sequences and wields statistics like a crusading journalist. Grand in scope, audacious in its political portraits, convincing in its socio-economic arguments and humane to the core, The Border is not only a formidable thriller but an important and provocative work.
Washington Post
These angry, often heartbreaking books stand as the definitive fictional rendering of an ongoing modern tragedy. . . . The Border guides us through a savage, wholly believable world. The result is a powerful—and painful—journey through a contemporary version of hell. Rarely has hell been so compelling.
Globe &Mail
Peak page-turner. . . Will rattle your soul in those early-morning hours as you come face to face with all the corruption and depravity in the world. . . The crime-fiction equivalent of The Stand—the kind of compulsive Stephen King-esque epic that captivates and horrifies.
Associated Press Staff
Don Winslow’s epic trilogy about America’s longest war comes to a powerful and troubling conclusion.
LitHub
Winslow tells a hell of a compelling story.
Dan Pfeiffer
I couldn’t put [The Border] down. Like everything Don Winslow writes, it grabs you on page one and never lets go. It’s also particularly timely given all that’s going on in the world.
Booklist (starred review)
The publication of [The Border] represents a landmark moment in crime fiction . . . It is Winslow’s remarkable ability to translate the utter fiasco of our 5-year War on Drugs into the most wrenching of human stories, tragedy seemingly without end, that gives this novel its unparalleled power.
APRIL 2019 - AudioFile
Narrator Ray Porter depicts Art Keller’s turmoil with tenderness and compassion as the DEA agent turned director exposes the corruption associated with America’s addiction to illegal drugs.The final installment of this sprawling trilogy about America’s drug war in Mexico and Central America moves to the marbled corridors of Washington DC, ending in blood, death, and, eventually, truth. As Keller dramatically testifies on the failed trillion-dollar effort, Porter gives Keller’s exhausted and wrung-out persona an edge of desperation and anger. An explosive climax gives the listener a new perspective on a well-covered issue. Keller’s decades-long journey reflects the horror and failure of the war against drugs with empathy and sorrow. R.O. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2019-01-21
Winslow (The Cartel, 2015, etc.) wraps up his trilogy, 20 years in the making, on the war on drugs as it's played out on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Art Keller is a man with enemies. Wherever he goes, he leaves a pile of bodies behind him—narcotraficantes, cops on the take, bad guys of every description. Sometimes he plies his trade in Guatemala, sometimes El Paso, sometimes D.C., wherever the white lines take him. But now—well, he's in trouble, at war "against his own DEA, the U.S. Senate, the Mexican drug cartels, even the president of the United States." Someone is irritated enough at him, in fact, that a sniper has been dispatched to shoot up the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, where Keller is paying his respects. That's guaranteed to tick Keller off, and so he goes into battle in a changed scenario: The hit men and Zetas of old are shadows of their former selves while the new generation struts around, as one does, in "a black Saint Laurent jacket that has to go for at least three grand." When Keller notices such stuff, it means you're on his radar, which is not where you want to be. He recruits a few like-minded warriors, and off they go. Well, some of them, anyway: "If you want to be in the real war, fly back to Seattle, pack your things, and be here ready to work first thing Monday morning," he growls to a kid who wants to go zipping around in helicopters with a knife between his teeth instead of manning a desk. The bad guys begin to drop off in a tale that's part Tom Clancy, part didactic and ever-so-gritty how-it's-done asides ("The Americans teamed with the Mexican marines on raids that were basically executions") and part old-school shoot'em-up: "Keller takes the policeman's sidearm—a 9mm Glock—and moves through the trees toward the shooter."
Jack Ryan's got nothing on Winslow's guy. An action-filled, sometimes even instructive look at the world of the narcos and their discontents.
