The Border, and the other two books in this trilogy, are modern thrillers as Dickensian social documents, filled with moral outrage at the horrors of injustice, specifically, those of the fifty-year-long war on drugs. In the aftermath of the death of Adan Barrera, as a young generation of druglords come into their own, Mexico is plunged back into brutal and bloody violence. Art Keller takes a new role as head of the DEA, deter,ined to finally reach into the well-nigh untouchable towers of high finance, and finding himself at the heart of a politcial storm that threatens to break over a complex operation stretching from mexico to New York. A brave undercover policeman risks everything, a Gutamalan boy flees the gangs on a train called The Beast, a junkie coupl go from fix to fix and Eddie Ruiz gets out of prison and back in the game. Horrors and tragedies unfold, and there seems to be no respite or solution that can get past vested interests and institutional corruption.

Amazing, riveting, heartbreaking work of fiction ripped bleeding, as they say, from the headlines.