Los Angeles. 1983. A storm is coming and its name is crack. Set against the infancy of the crack cocaine epidemic and its ultimate radical impact on the culture as we know it, the story follows numerous characters on a violent collision course.
In early-1970s Las Vegas, Sam "Ace" Rothstein gets tapped by his bosses to head the Tangiers Casino. At first, he's a great success in the job, but over the years, problems with his loose-cannon enforcer Nicky Santoro, his ex-hustler wife Ginger, her con-artist ex Lester Diamond and a handful of corrupt politicians put Sam in ever-increasing danger.
An exploration of the United States of America's war on drugs from multiple perspectives. For the new head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the war becomes personal when he discovers his well-educated daughter is abusing cocaine within their comfortable suburban home. In Mexico, a flawed, but noble policeman agrees to testify against a powerful general in league with a cartel, and in San Diego, a drug kingpin's sheltered trophy wife must learn her husband's ruthless business after he is arrested, endangering her luxurious lifestyle.
Two children, Ignacio and Enrique, know love, the movies and fear in a religious school at the beginning of the 1960s. Father Manolo, director of the school and its professor of literature, is witness to and part of these discoveries. The three are followed through the next few decades, their reunion marking life and death.
On New Year's Eve, inside a police station that's about to be closed for good, officer Jake Roenick must cobble together a force made up cops and criminals to save themselves from a mob looking to kill mobster Marion Bishop.
Earl Stone, a man in his eighties, is broke, alone, and facing foreclosure of his business when he is offered a job that simply requires him to drive. Easy enough, but, unbeknownst to Earl, he's just signed on as a drug courier for a Mexican cartel. He does so well that his cargo increases exponentially, and Earl hit the radar of hard-charging DEA agent Colin Bates.
When a successful New York public defender loses his first case, he is pulled into a drug heist by a former client in an effort to beat the broken system at its own game.
Before he built a drug empire, Ferry Bouman returns to his hometown on a revenge mission that finds his loyalty tested — and a love that alters his life.
This is the story of Isa, who grows up in a Hamburg suburb. It might be one of the world's richest cities but every beast has its belly and here, in the very underbelly, Chiko lives in a world where violence, staking and keeping a claim, and drug taking are the norm. Where down is not an option, Chiko is determined to rise to the top, whatever and whomever it costs.