The Power of the Dog (Power of the Dog, #1)

by Don Winslow

“One thing we know it isn’t,” Art says. “It isn’t cocaine, because . . .” They both finish the line, “. . . there is no coke in Mexico!” They laugh at this shared joke, a ritual chant, a sarcastic rendering of the official line given to them by their bosses at the DEA. According to the suits in Washington, the planes full of coke that’ve been coming in more regularly and more often than United Airlines are a figment of Art Keller’s imagination. The received wisdom is that the Mexican drug trade was destroyed back in the Operation Condor days. The official reports say so, the DEA says so, the State Department says so, and the attorney general says so—and none of the aforementioned needs Art Keller to create fantasies about Mexican drug “cartels.”