The author, in his twenties, was an undercover P.I. busting crime rings in New York. He now brings intense realism to a pounding account of narco-trafficking across our southern border, from 1975 to 1999, in an attempt to better understand current trends. With a splendidly realized cast of characters on both sides of the law who sustain the predatory trade and motivate its apprehension, he traces the evolution of cartels into an untouchable economic force boasting of corporate sophistication.

Sunday School teachers and sheltered librarians shouldn't come near it. By its nature, it's unmerciful in its details of killing, both wholesale and intimate. You can't tip toe through the greed, cruelty and payback.

In a flash-forward prologue, DEA agent Art Keller discovers a narcotraficante annihilation of nineteen people in a village of Baja California in 1997: men, women, children, babies, cut up by AK-47s. The particular way one body was butchered tells Keller the reason for the attack--the belief that the man was an informer, a traitor. One of the Mexican cops calls the scene of carnage, "El poder del perro." The power of the dog. Revenge. Only, Keller is thinking he's partly to blame.

It starts for him back in 1975 when, as an ex-Vietnam vet, a happily married man, and a DEA "advisor" to the federales, he steps into a boxing ring with Adan Barrera, "The Little Lion of Culiacan." Keller's bold and dangerous act is the only means he can think of to infiltrate the drug underworld. He barely exits the ring alive, but he earns the respect of Adan, his brother Raul, and uncle Miguel Angel Barrera, a Sinaloan state cop.

Officer Barrera makes Keller an offer to take down the current drug lord of Sinaloa, Don Pedro Aviles. Thinking of Barrera's operation in terms of Richard Nixon's War on Drugs, Keller soon learns he's been manipulated by his Mexican colleague. The arrest Keller expected turns into an execution and, as he will later learn, it's the first step in Barrera's plan to succeed Aviles.

Once control of the local drug ring is in his hands, "Don" Barrera calls a meeting of competing and combating drug bosses and convinces them to form a federacion in which each will take a separate region and pay him, as the super patron, a cut, in return for unchallenged dominion over their territory.

As this arrangement shapes and reshapes itself, Keller becomes more than just another DEA agent and Adan more than a promising boxer with a corrupt uncle. Keller, as the chief officer of the district, pursues the cartels with every means of deception and subterfuge to either subdue them or motivate their mutual liquidation--all the while looking over his back as he violates orders from political higher-ups to stop the chase.

Adan, after helping his uncle enforce his federation, takes it over. Once in that position, the urbane sociopath methodically eliminates each territorial boss and eventually achieves the power to dictate terms to Mexico's new president. He is now Keller's prime enemy in a war that is personal, strategic and blood-soaked.

The dark epic involves the beautiful protege prostitute of a San Diego cathouse, Nora Hayden, who will become Adan's mistress and a major player in the outcome; Sal Scachi, Green Beret, CIA, made member of the Mafia, Knight of Malta and member of Opus Dei; the superbly dependable (and unusually sensible) marksman of the crew, Irishman Sean Callan, a guy to whom a well paced shot is artistic expression; old buddy O-Bop; the gruesome Piccone brothers; Mexican intelligence agent Antonio Ramos; and Archbishop Juan Parada who saves Nora's life and becomes her closest and unlikeliest friend.

Winslow indicts the insidious nature of the sociopaths behind the drug trade like no one ever has. He fuels his narrative with conviction and rocket engine pacing, cooling his jets only long enough here and there to provide "real history," as he puts it (in an interview). With this mix, its scope and revelatory detail, I see a direct aim on the style of "The DaVinci Code," shedding light into the shadows of drug trafficking like Dan Brown did with church-related secrets and cabals. But, this is not to imply that it's imitative. Winslow, with 3 prior books slated for movie production, pulls it off masterfully and, whether it produces a similar level of commercial success or not, he creates a dynamo of a book and a central character who is tough enough, compassionate enough and obsessed enough as a lawman to magnetize the madness he drives us through.

If you like an adventure into the sacred or the untouchable, take this ride. Personally, after Art Keller recovers from his wounds, and author Winslow from his book tours, I'm hoping for a return engagement.