Days of the dead
Days of the Dead ( English original title: The Power of the Dog ) is a thriller by Don Winslow from 2005 and deals with the War on Drugs as well as aspects of Operation Condor in the 1970s. In his follow-up novel, The Cartel , Winslow continues the story of the US drug investigator Art Keller.
action
The novel is about a drug investigator for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Art Keller, who left the CIA after the Vietnam War and was taken over by the newly founded DEA. In Mexico, Keller is initially isolated from his own people as well as from the Mexican police. One day he meets brothers Adán and Raul Barerra, who work as boxing managers, in a boxing studio. By boxing with her champion and not giving up despite being inferior, Keller wins her respect. Adán introduces him to his uncle, Miguel Angel Barrera, the governor's right-hand man, whom his friends call Tió. From then on, Tió helps Keller and thus ensures a number of successful searches. Together with Tió, Keller orchestrates Operation Condor, a massive campaign to burn down poppy fields in the Mexican state of Sinaloa. In fact, however, the action is just Tió's method of eliminating unwanted competitors. He and a few other dealers have ruled Mexico's drug trade. Together they found the Federacion, a drug cartel that is changing paradigms. Instead of growing their own drugs, the cartel members take advantage of their advantageous location between the cocaine-producing countries in the South and the drug users in North America and are only middlemen instead of producers. The cartel is experiencing an unprecedented upswing, not least because the DEA assumes that Operation Condor will end the drug trade in Mexico.
In New York, the two Irish-American gangsters Sean Callan and O-Bop rather involuntarily clash with the ruling gangsters in their neighborhood. After Callan kills a collector of one of the biggest gangsters in Hells Kitchen to protect his friend O-Bop, the two fight for the position of rulers of the neighborhood. They come into contact with the Italian mafia. They get into the drug business with the "Peaches" brothers.
Keller now has a post as head of a DEA office in Mexico. He and his collaborators Ernie Hidalgo and Shaq follow the rise of the Federacion; in the US, however, nobody believes them, and in Mexico the police and politics are firmly in the hands of the drug dealers. Keller installs a bug in Tió's love nest and uses the information obtained to direct the police in the USA, bypassing his superiors. In response to the successful raids in the United States, the drug traffickers kidnap Hidalgo in order to torture the informant's name from him. However, Keller has wisely kept the type of information gathering to himself. After Hidalgo's kidnapping, there is massive pressure to search, but Hidalgo is only found dead. Tió is arrested in El Salvador. Despite hesitation, Keller does not kill him, but arrests him. In the course of his investigation, Keller uncovered Operation Kerberos, in which the CIA sold cocaine from South America to the Sicilian mafia in order to finance right-wing paramilitaries in South America. The link is the fanatical Christian and communist hater Sal Scachi, who is a member of an anti-communist and Catholic order, CIA agent, member of the American Special Forces and mafioso. As a result, Tió is released by the CIA shortly after his arrest.
A few years later, the Federacion was firmly established. However, Keller now uses his knowledge of the machinations of the CIA: In exchange for his false testimony before a committee of inquiry, he obtains the necessary support for the arrest of those responsible for Hidalgo's kidnapping and murder.
The novel interweaves the history of Mexican drug smuggling and drug cartels from 1977 to 2004 with fictional elements and people. It is based on real events, such as the murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena (1985) or the assassination attempt on Archbishop Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo in Guadalajara (1993) and does not present any new facts. The drug bosses appearing and resigning in the novel are reminiscent of those of the Medellín cartel ( Pablo Escobar ) or the Sinaloa cartel ( El Chapo ). The actions are told from the fictional point of view of the numerous characters in the novel and their private life and lifestyle are described in detail.
people
- Kind of basement
- Father Parada
- Nora Hayden
- Adán Barrera
- Raul Barrera
- Miguel Angel Barrera (Tió)
- Sean Callan
- Sal Scachi
- Güero Mendéz
- O-bop
- Peaches
- Little Peaches
Awards
- 2010 Maltese Falcon Award for The Power of the Dog .
- 2010 number 1 in the annual list of the KrimiWelt best list for Days of the Dead
- 2011 German Crime Prize (International Prize) for Days of the Dead .
- 2011 Best crime thriller of the season, awarded by Buchkultur for Days of the Dead .
Text output
- The Power of the Dog . 2005. ISBN 0-375-40538-0 .
- Days of the dead . From the American by Chris Shepherd. Suhrkamp Verlag , Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-518-46200-3 .
- Days of the dead . From the American by Chris Shepherd. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-518-46340-6 .
Audio book
- Days of the dead . German by Chris Hirte, read by Dietmar Wunder . Audio Verlag, Berlin 2012. ISBN 978-3-86231-226-9 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Peter Körte: Don Winslow on Mexico's drug war. Forget this is all true! FAZ.NET, September 21, 2010, accessed on February 28, 2012 .
- ↑ Thomas Wörtche: campaign of revenge in the drug war. dradio.de, October 19, 2010, accessed on February 28, 2012 .