The Power of the Dog

By: Don Winslow

Narrated by: Ray Porter

Length: 20 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

This explosive novel of the drug trade takes you deep inside a world riddled with corruption, betrayal, and bloody revenge.

Art Montana is an obsessive DEA agent. The Barrera brothers are heirs to a drug empire. Nora Hayden is a jaded teenager who becomes a high-class hooker. Father Parada is a powerful and incorruptible Catholic priest. Callan is an Irish kid from Hell's Kitchen who grows up to be a merciless hit man. All of them are trapped in the world of the Mexican drug Federación.

From the streets of New York City to Mexico City and Tijuana to the jungles of Central America, this is the war on drugs like you've never seen it.

©2005 Don Winslow (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"A pit bull of a book. Once unleashed, this thriller...charges and attacks without mercy, shredding anyone in its path....A well-tuned plot, driving rhythm, intelligence and a touch of politics." ( Washington Post)

And here lies the problem...

What made the experience of listening to The Power of the Dog the most enjoyable?

I spent 32 years chasing narco in Los Angeles. Did I make a difference? Did I put a dent in the trade. Was it all worth it? The answer is no. We never caught the big guys, we only reeled in the little fish. The narrative in this book rings true. The violence is real and believe me the 5 Freeway continues to be a narcotics super highway to this day. The dope goes north and the money goes south. The politicians don't care. We still have an open border with Mexico. The bad guys laugh at us. Just like the book.

Ray Porter is an incredible narrator and brings the Power of the Dog to life. My only beef is the author needs to pay attention to some minor details concerning firearms. A "service revolver" does not have a "safety". You can't release the safety on a revolver before firing it because there is NO safety. The M-60 machine gun fires 7.62mm rounds and is not a "50 caliber". Hearing these descriptions made me cringe as everything else about the narco trade and their antics is spot on.

Authors should check firearm references before publication with someone familiar with weapons and their functionality. I can't fault Don Winslow for including some accurate references to the Marine Corps and Camp Pendleton. For that, he gets a Semper Fi from me.

I'm looking forward to the sequel.

Winslow Doesn't Much Like Mexico

Don Winslow's, um, discomfort with Mexico, its culture, its politics is matched by his furor with Los Estados Unidos and its culture and politics. His anger is so extreme you'll wish you had contrast controls. I don't know where the history of this story leaves off and undiluted polemics set in. Yet as fiction, it makes you consider just how much a super-talented nihilist writer like Winslow should be allowed to wonder in print. Art is about emotional communication, and Winslow knows how to blast through all of the entry ports.

Ray Porter's reading? Well if this were a stage show, when Porter took his bow, the audience would stand! You looking for a thriller that's greeting card nice and puppy cute? This ain't it. Frank Dusch wrote, "“You can’t stop people from thinking – but you can start them.” ... 'The Power Of The Dog' does that, but... and this is s very ballsy but... I repeat, Winslow is a nihilist, so the questions he stabs at us take thoughts to dark, dank conclusions.

Deserves good reviews

As the New York Times critic pointed out this book should be read before the just released book The Cartel. Winslow brings the whole sordid realpolitik of the Latin American drug trade to life. The narrator is excellent.

Great novel delivered by a truly gifted narrator

This gets under your skin and doesn't make you feel so good, I like that about it. Novels like this change you after you finish reading them, It opens your peripheral. There is a lot of information here, Don Winslow certainly put the research in and it doesn't at all feel like ranting. And of course Ray Porter is absolutely amazing! Add all this stuff up and you get a modern classic. “AUDIBLE 20 REVIEW SWEEPSTAKES ENTRY”

Story seeps you along fast paced

Sometimes writers can use fiction to tell more of the facts than nonfiction.This is a well researched account of the failed war on drugs and the human casualties of this war. A lot of it is based on actual events. There is a surprising subplot regarding
Religion and loss of faith. Recmended

True to life and gripping.

I think this is my second review second read better than first. stunning brutality and story could be ripped from the the headlines.. after working near and supporting law enforcement with these frontline deadly jobs, it seemed very true to life.

Loved this book

This was an amazing book, one of my favorites I’ve ever heard. The book was amazing and so was the narrator very well done. I loved it. On to “the cartel” now.

Excellent (and Violent)

This is not a perfect book, as 5 stars might suggest, but it is still a superb effort. A sprawling drug cartel crime drama that spans much of Latin America, creeps into the cities of California, and even reaches into New York City’s crime syndicate. Perhaps Winslow’s greatest success is that in such a wide-ranging tale made up of players who generally remain faceless participants in distant news stories he is able to create humans. No one is entirely evil—even the most evil villain—and no one is entirely upright—even the most resilient hero. By the end we the audience find ourselves rooting most vigorously for the happiness of a prostitute who has slept with countless Johns and a cold-blooded killer who has killed innumerable marks.

The choices the characters make are morally ambiguous where nothing seems quite right. In fact, perhaps the greatest shortcoming cannot be blamed on Winslow by rather on the human condition, the inescapability of the evil that lurks as an ever-present danger, wherein the destruction of one evil always creates a void which must be filled immediately by another evil that is always more resistant to that which is good. As a result, there is an omnipresent sense of inevitable darkness, and we know deep down that we are complicit and at the same time as helpless as the characters to escape our complicity.

Since the nature of the subject matter calls for a more gritty down-to-earth tone, the language is not particularly literary, but I think that Winslow’s narrator sometimes becomes overly conversational, slipping into valley girl ‘like,’ ‘you know,’ and the like. In the same vein, his fluency in moving between Spanish and English as well as character to character allows the characters’ individuality blossom in the wasteland of the novel’s violent humanity.

For me, though, it is how Winslow weaves real politics and statistics and wars throughout Mexico, Latin America, and southern California (not to mention a brief foray into Sino-American relations) into his story so that not only are we enjoying a captivating character-driven crime drama, but we are also gaining a much more intimate understanding of the complexities of the many-fronted war on terrorism-Communism-fill-in-the-blankism America has been fighting for more than 40 years. Moreover, we discover bits of history with which we generally have little or no knowledge, and we are horrified at both the abhorrent covert actions of our government and the very fact that we knew nothing about those actions. How much more are we unaware of? How do we make enough people aware enough to make change? Most unsettling—is there an ‘enough’?

Narration: Ray Porter is superb. His accents are accurate (to this layman’s ears) and the characters speak as they should and with emotion. The voices clearly delineate each character in the listeners mind (with the exception of women…their voices sounded almost totally interchangeable with the exception of the Irish New Yorker Siobhan). And his narrator’s voice is just perfectly paced with great inflection and his own sense of emotional connection. Absolutely excellent narration. I am not sure I would rate this book so high had I read it without Ray Porter’s narrating.

Quick Additional comment: there are a few scenes of torture that definitely add an R-rating to this fare and are not suitable for those with squeamish stomachs.

Well Crafted

The Power of the Dog is a hard-hitting novel that successfully blends a wide variety of characters and locations into a comprehensive story of the drug trade. It moves quickly and despite its length is not tiresome. The violence in Central America, the drug trade, the earthquake in Mexico and other parts of the storyline read like yesterdays newspaper stories adding credibility to an already believeable novel.

Need a good book for a long journey

Good long story for that long haul or journey. A look at the drug world and the involvement of the dealers, government, crime fighters, and victims.

Not for the faint heated, but makes one wonder, How real does it get?