Janet Maslin
On
the opening page of “The Cartel,” Don Winslow
mixes a baby’s cry with the sound of a helicopter’s blades in
a predawn raid. That’s reminiscent of his 2005 novel, “The Power of the Dog,”
which also used a baby on its opening page. “The baby is dead in his mother’s
arms,” that book began, and went on to describe the horrific image of a
bullet-riddled Madonna and child in Mexico. It was the first step into what
would become Mr. Winslow’s drug war version of “The Godfather,” with all the
grand ambition that implies.
“The Cartel” is a big, sprawling,
ultimately stunning crime tableau that can be read as a stand-alone. But the
ideal approach, if you can make the leap and commitment, is to read the two
books in sequence as a Part 1 and a Part 2. Together, the two span nearly 1,200
pages and 40 years and present a multifaceted view of what is, in Mr. Winslow’s
opinion, America’s longest war: the war on drugs. “The Power of the Dog” covers
the first 30 years, during which the war was fought on a much more intimate
scale than it was from 2004 to 2014, the period covered by “The Cartel.”
Though the two books are filled with
equally vicious reality-based events, “The Cartel” reflects the grim latter-day
shift from traditional gangster tactics to those of global terrorism. The new
book’s cartels have their own private, monstrously media-savvy armies that
reflect the basic thinking of Al Qaeda. As one of Mr. Winslow’s characters puts
it: “What good is an atrocity if no one knows you did it?”
“The Cartel” picks up at a relatively easy
entrance point in this crowded and complicated story. The first book’s main
characters, Art Keller and Adán Barrera, who met young and went on to become a
Drug Enforcement Administration agent and a Sonora cartel kingpin, remain sworn
enemies. Much of what happened in the first book guarantees that they will stay
that way. One, as a private joke, has sworn to himself that he will put poppies
on the other’s grave.
As “The Cartel”
begins, Barrera still holds court and runs an empire with a mannerliness that
recalls Corleone-style noblesse oblige. But he does it from inside the
Metropolitan Correctional Center in San Diego, where, at 50, he faces multiple
lifetime sentences. Even the quick synopsis of what Keller did to trick Barrera
onto United States soil is enough to justify the undying enmity between them.
They have no intention of ending their grudge match, just as Barrera has no
intention of staying incarcerated for very long. (Certain details, like how the
Barrera clan celebrates Christmas in prison, comes from Mr. Winslow’s extensive
research into real figures in the drug war.)
“The Cartel”
has so many moving parts that there is reason to envy Keller the Christmas he
spends all alone, eating a frozen dinner, studying the spreadsheets and
background data the book never provides in consolidated form. There are so many
murderous grudges and so many shifting gang allegiances that parts of the book
require close attention; you may even find yourself backing up a time or two.
What is never
confusing, though, is the degree of vengefulness and corruption that has been
bred into some of the cartel’s soldiers at shockingly early ages. And since the
command of choice here is to inflict pain as frighteningly as possible, there
are no scarier words a captive can hear than “you’re next.”
Mr. Winslow, a
cult favorite for many reasons, has written about a different milieu —
California’s surf and drug culture — much more stylishly (“The Dawn Patrol”)
and conversationally (“Savages”) than he writes here. “The Cartel,” like “The Power of the
Dog,” can be better appreciated for its gritty, gasp-inducing knowledge of true
crime’s brutal extremes, and for its unflinching awareness of what Mr. Winslow
calls “evil beyond the possibility of redemption.”
Even tougher
than the outright violence is the slow destruction of idealists — be they in
journalism, medicine, intellectual life, government or just in search of a more
lawful Mexican society — who think they can escape the long shadow of this
ugliness, and who one after another are proved horribly wrong. “The Cartel,”
which involves graphic beheading and dismembering, is dedicated to a long list
of journalists who have been killed or have “disappeared” in the Mexican drug
wars.
But there are
high spirits and comic relief to be found in the way that much of the drug
lords’ and want-to-bes’ self-images come from American popular culture. Many of
the characters seem to think of themselves à la “The Godfather,” to the point
where “Al Pacino” can be used as a verb, however badly. To “Al Pacino him”
seems to denote a revenge killing in a restaurant, even if the crucial
gun-hidden-in-the-bathroom part is skipped to save time. To become a famous
gangster means to have a movie made about you, although one of the most
appealingly thickheaded killers here doesn’t understand why he needs to be
punished at the story’s end.
Mr. Winslow,
who has rightly been compared to James Ellroy (and praised by Mr. Ellroy) for his ability to
capture an entire crime culture in the sweep of “The Cartel,” leaves room for
at least one smart, interesting woman to play the drug lords’ game better than
the men do. But as in all great crime fiction, the game is as damning as it is
seductive and not conducive to happily-ever-afters. “The Cartel” culminates in
a near-symphonic array of lethal coups de grace, written with such
hallucinatory intensity that the whole book seems to have turned into a
synchronized fireworks display. And still Mr. Winslow adds one last, hellish
image that “takes the freakin’ cake.” To make sure this story is something you
won’t forget.
THE CARTEL
By Don Winslow
Illustrated. 616 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95.
.jpeg)
0 comentaris:
Publica un comentari a l'entrada