Once you're in, you can't back out: You just have to keep going deeper and deeper. With his latest thriller, Don Winslow demonstrates yet again why he's considered the successor to legends like Raymond Chandler and Elmore Leonard: Locking a cast of captivating characters into a conflict from which there's no escape, SAVAGES, will ensnare you until the last page, through every gorgeously brutal, dark and witty twist.

Ben and Chon have it pretty good. No - better than pretty good. They have it great. Thanks to Ben's entrepreneurial genius and Chon's Navy SEAL training, they run the number-one marijuana operation in Southern California, growing and selling the best weed on the planet. (Their dealers even get health care.) Through careful management of the business, they've made millions, leaving them free to smoke up and play volleyball and consort with their friend and playmate O (short for Ophelia) - at least, whenever Ben isn't off in some third-world country, trying to make Earth a better place.

Then an email arrives: a video showing nine decapitated men. It's a message from the Baja Cartel, a Mexican crime syndicate that wants to take over Ben and Chon's operation. The cartel is not interested in negotiating; their offer is unilateral and quite simple: Ben and Chon can continue to sell their product to their established clientele and give the lion's share of profits to the cartel - or they can star in a video of their own. (They're Walmart," O observes.)

Chon, who knows something about killing - he's done tours with the military and mercenary organizations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and knows from his own dad's involvement with Latin drug cartels what they can be like - wants to strike back. These people are savages, he tells Ben, and they'll interpret anything else as weakness. Peaceful philanthropist Ben, though, doesn't want to fight, especially when he knows they can't win. Instead, he tells the cartel they're closing up shop and makes plans to leave the country for a few years with Chon and O.