Books like The Cartel

01

In Cold Blood

Truman Capote · Memoir

Truman Capote's account of the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas — and of the investigation, capture, trial, and execution of the killers Perry Smith and Richard Hickock — is the founding document of the true crime genre and one of the most admired works of American nonfiction of the twentieth century.

A kindred thriller read.

02

The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien · Memoir

Tim O'Brien served as a foot soldier in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970.

A kindred thriller read.

03

Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy · Literary fiction

Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West is set along the Texas-Mexico border in the 1840s and loosely follows a teenage runaway known only as the kid, who falls in with the Glanton gang — a historical band of scalp hunters hired by the Mexican government to kill Apache raiders.

A kindred thriller read.

04

Killers of the Flower Moon

David Grann · History

In the 1920s, members of the Osage Nation in northeastern Oklahoma were being murdered.

Both dig into institutional failure.

05

The Dogs of Riga

Henning Mankell · Thriller

The Dogs of Riga is the second Kurt Wallander novel, published in 1992 and set partly in Sweden but primarily in Latvia at the moment the Soviet Union is collapsing.

Both dig into moral compromise.

06

The Firm

John Grisham · Thriller

Mitch McDeere is a Harvard Law graduate who accepts a job at a small, lavishly compensating Memphis firm called Bendini, Lambert & Locke.

Both dig into moral compromise.

07

The Poet

Michael Connelly · Thriller

Jack McEvoy is a crime reporter in Denver whose twin brother, a homicide detective, apparently kills himself.

Both dig into institutional failure.

08

The Power of the Dog

Don Winslow · Thriller

The Power of the Dog is Don Winslow's epic of the American drug war, covering roughly three decades from the 1970s to the early 2000s and tracing the rise of the Sinaloa cartel through the lives of a DEA agent, a priest, a hitman, a cartel boss, and several other figures whose fates are bound together by money, faith, violence, and the specific kind of corruption that a war without exit produces.

Both dig into moral compromise.

09

The Surgeon

Tess Gerritsen · Thriller

The Surgeon is the first book in Tess Gerritsen's Rizzoli & Isles series, though it begins primarily as a Jane Rizzoli solo novel.

Both dig into institutional failure.

10

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

John le Carré · Thriller

George Smiley, a rumpled, semi-retired British intelligence officer, is pulled back from the cold to investigate a claim that a Soviet mole has burrowed into the very top of MI6 — the Circus, as insiders call it.

Both dig into moral compromise.

11

Devil in a Blue Dress

Walter Mosley · Mystery

Easy Rawlins is a Black World War II veteran living in Watts in 1948.

Both dig into moral compromise.

12

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

Thomas E. Ricks · History

Thomas Ricks was the Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post when he wrote Fiasco, and the book reflects years of direct access to the military officials, planners, and soldiers involved in the Iraq War.

Both dig into institutional failure.