THE BORDER

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.