The Border

Adan Barrera, our fictional stand-in for Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and the former head of the Sinaloa cartel is dead. With the ruthless next generation scrambling to fill the void, Pax Sinaloa is no more. Bodies are piling up, chopped into pieces, hung from bridges, screened on social media as they are tortured and executed, or cut down in a hail of bullets as alliances are made and broken.

Meanwhile former Agent Art Keller has been appointed head of the DEA and is certain of only one thing, the war on drugs has failed. It's been a half-century of failed policy at a cost of $1 trillion for 45 million arrests that hasn't made a dent. And now the United States is seeing a resurgence in heroin usage on the heels of the opioid epidemic and the introduction of deadly fentanyl.

Winslow also weaves in stories of a 10 year old boy trying to sneak into the US on the real world “tren de la muerte”, the disappearance and subsequent massacre of 43 students that happened in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico in 2014 and of course real-estate tycoon turned reality TV star with a tenuous grasp of the English language and a love for Twitter taking the 2016 presidential election - John Dennison (a combination perhaps of John Barron and David Dennison, two pseudonyms Trump has been known to use.)

And of course the also fictional son-in-law relying on drug cartel money to finance foundering real estate investments in exchange for inside influence that goes to the very top.

It's a lot to take in and frankly should come with a trigger warning as any hint of resolution or justice feels more like artistic license and the lone bit of authorial indulgence. I suspect the reality is far worse and even less likely to be resolved.