Observe & Report: Talking with Don Winslow About His New Book 'The Cartel'

Don Winslow spent a decade researching the U.S.–Mexico drug war for The Power of the Dog; then the war kept going, so he wrote The Cartel. The sequel — DEA agent Art Keller versus cartel patrón Adán Barrera, round two — arrives with reviews comparing it to The Godfather and a film deal at Fox with Ridley Scott attached, closed before the book even shipped.

Winslow is blunt about method: the novel's atrocities are transcribed, not invented. 'I made up the names. I didn't make up the events — I couldn't have.' The book is dedicated to journalists murdered covering the war, a list that runs to more than a hundred names.

On the screen deal, he's wry: 'They bought a 600-page novel about failed policy. Somebody's brave.' He and his agent-collaborator Shane Salerno have been through development before; Winslow's Savages became an Oliver Stone film in 2012.

Update: development did its usual dance — directors and formats came and went, and the trilogy Winslow completed with The Border in 2019 remains one of the most anticipated unmade adaptations in television. The novel is cataloged here; read it before Hollywood figures it out.