cover image The Wolf

The Wolf

Lorenzo Carcaterra. Ballantine, $25 (320p) ISBN 978-0-345-48394-2

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. [em]Agent: Erin Junkin, WME. (Aug.) [/em]