The Wolf

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.

August 1, 2014
After a terrorist attack on a plane kills his wife and two daughters, mob superboss Vincent "The Wolf" Marelli unleashes a plot against terrorist networks with the support of crime syndicates from around the globe. Thirty-two-year-old Vincent's most formidable partner is the strikingly beautiful and lethal Angela "The Strega" Jannetti, heir to the throne of the Italian Camorra syndicate in Naples. The two were like kissing cousins as teenagers, when Vincent spent time in Italy. His most feared opponent is the unhinged Islamic terrorist Raza. The Wolf is also opposed by the terrorist-funding Russian mob, led by Vladimir "The Impaler" Kostolov, and Mexico's evil drug lords. Vincent may be as coldblooded a killer as anyone, but he's a devoted family man. He envisions having his revenge and then leading a normal life with his young son, Jack. Finding out who killed the rest of his family, however, proves more difficult than he anticipated. While the notion of a United Nations of gangsters has a certain Avengers-like appeal, anyone looking for the slightest bit of complexity or subtlety will be disappointed. It's not enough for Carcaterra (Midnight Angels, 2010, etc.) to say the Camorra is "one of the most vicious criminal outfits in the world" and that Angela killed a dozen rival mob bosses by putting rat poison in their dinners. He also has to describe her as "powerful and deadly" and "the most vicious gangster in Italy and one of the most powerful in Europe." And, oh yes, "she had a dark and sinister side." Things blow up early and often in Carcaterra's new thriller, but it's too simple-minded to be much fun.

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July 1, 2014
Carcaterra writes thug novels from a thug's point of view, and his goon is convincing when he opines that Bogart made a lousy gangster, just a rich kid trying to act tough. Cagney was better. There's more intriguing insiderish stuff here, as when his hero talks about Middle Eastern terrorist cells recruiting disaffected American and European youths. Wire the kids and send them into crowded terminals believing that when they press that detonator they'll go right to heaven, where the party's under way. But the novel veers away from this unsettling material and into a good but conventional actioner, a Bond novel told by a Bond villain. Marelli, the Wolf of the title, is the crime boss of all crime bosses, a Blofeld transfixed by grief when his wife and daughters are killed. Bloodthirsty Russian and Mexican terrorists are destabilizing his criminal empire, which he has brought from the streets to the boardrooms, and the murders are a warning. Outsiders have to die. They do, for 320 pages, in a torrent of blood. Action fans will love it.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)