“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.
-- Publishers Weekly

"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 the 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 a crime boss of all crime bosses, a Blofeld transfixed by the grief when his wife and daughters are killed. Bloodthirsty Russian and Mexican terrorists are destabilizing his criminal empire, which he has brought from the street 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."
-- Don Crinklaw, Booklist

"The best-selling crime writer hardly needs a boost, but at BEA THE WOLF was often invoked for its strong confessional voice, noirish revenge plot and Mafia-meets-terrorism mash-up."
-- New York Magazine

"Lorenzo Carcaterra is one of the my favorite writers in the world, and The Wolf is his best book yet. In it you’ll meet the superbly crafted crime boss Vincent Marelli—and then you’ll spend this riveting read trying to decide whether Marelli, like Michael Corleone, is a hero or a villain. Pick up a copy of The Wolf and you won’t put it down until the surprise ending!”
-- Lisa Scottoline, New York Times bestselling author of Accused


“The Wolf crackles with the geopolitical high stakes of Homeland, the intrigue and lore of The Godfather, and the clock-ticking final showdown of 24. No one combines such themes as Renaissance art, global terror, and all things Italian like Lorenzo Carcaterra.”
-- Andrew Gross, New York Times bestselling author of Everything to Lose

"Carcaterra ... moves a story like nobody’s business — by page 16, we’re two terrorist attacks in, the first in a piazza in Florence, the second on Delta Flight 33, LAX to JFK, including among its victims the wife and young daughters of the man who runs what he calls the United Nations of Crime, a global Mafia of unprecedented power. “My name is Vincent Marelli and I own your life.” For 291 pages, anyway."
-- Newsday

"For action-thriller-conspiracy theory readers, Lorenzo Carcaterra's “The Wolf” features a mob boss waging war on a terrorist organization after his wife and daughter are killed in an attack"
-- Rege Behe, TribLIVE

"They say that it takes a thief to catch a thief. So what does it take to catch a terrorist? Try organized crime boss Vincent Marelli, who’s known — like the thriller he stars in — as “The Wolf.”
     Terrorists take out Marelli’s wife and daughters on an airline flight. So Marelli convenes a get-together of organized crime bosses from around the world and enlists some of them in a war on terror. In New York and then in Italy, Marelli’s hit men do battle, with the violent climax exploding around Italy’s centers of priceless art objects.
     Author Lorenzo Carcaterra has a deft touch with characters. And his plot — which hints at a sequel — shows that when it comes to the war on terror, the mob may have better soldiers than the U.S. Army."
-- Harry Levins, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Praise for Lorenzo Carcaterra

“Terrifying and heartbreaking . . . a brilliant, troubling, important book.”
-- Jonathan Kellerman, on Sleepers

“Crackles with action . . . a riveting and ingenious read that will keep you turning the pages.”
-- Douglas Preston, on Midnight Angels

“A powerful read . . . with plenty of action and dialogue as authentic as the streets of New York.”
-- St. Petersburg Times, on Paradise City

“A brilliant, multilayered novel that breathes and bleeds on every page. This book transcends the genre of crime fiction. It is a full-blooded novel and an epic read.”
-- Robert Crais, on Gangster