The Wolf

Narrator Keith Szarabajka masterfully brings to life the intensity of this clash between organized crime and terrorism. The titular character is Vincent Morelli, an American Mafia leader whose wife and two daughters were killed by terrorists aboard an international flight. Morelli brokers a tentative alliance with other global mob bosses to go to war with the jihadists and the Russian mobsters who are financing them, in part because it makes good, long-term business sense but largely for revenge. This scintillating thriller requires dozens of accents for the characters on both sides, and the versatile Szarabajka rises to the challenge. He and the author come together successfully make this riveting work both an action story and a character study. D.E.M. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Starred review from June 16, 2014
Carcaterra (Sleepers) explores the highest levels of organized crime and plumbs the depths of revenge in this high-octane thriller. At 37, Vincent Marelli (aka the Wolf) heads a United Nations of crime, a modern corporate structure uniting all the top-tier national criminal groups—except “the Russian mob, the Mexican crews, and every terrorist outfit on the grid.” Marelli’s wife, Lisa, wants to take a normal family vacation. But when Lisa and their two daughters perish in a terrorist attack aboard a commercial airline flight from L.A. to New York, Marelli persuades his fellow crime bosses to wage war against the suicidal terrorists and their enablers, who want to destroy everything his syndicate has built. By alternating Marelli’s first-person narrative with glimpses into the sinister Russian and terrorist mind sets, Carcaterra makes one group of bad guys convincingly bring down another group of bad guys and proves how murky that demarcation between good and evil really is. Agent: Erin Junkin, WME.