About the book

Synopsis

'If Juarez is a city of God, it's because the devil is scared to come here.'

A Juárez hit man (Sicario) speaks: he has killed hundreds of people, is an expert in torture and kidnapping, and for many years was a commander of the state police, receiving training from the FBI. There is a contract on his life of $250,000, and he lives as a fugitive.

This is the unvarnished truth about the war on drugs - the murders, the corruption, the warring cartels, the complicity of the American and Mexican governments, by a man who has seen it and shared in the violence. Through El Sicario's words we see, for the very first time, the life of a cartel hitman in sober yet graphic detail; the distribution of power in this mindblowingly corrupt country; and the contrition of a man who became so disturbed by his day job that he would wake from nightmares throttling his own wife.

Framed by two pieces by award-winning journalist Charles Bowden that set the scene for the reader, this deeply chilling and important book shows us the Mexican drugs war as we've never seen it before.