A review by joebathelt
Wolf by Mo Hayder

2.0

I really like Mo Hayder’s first two Jack Caffery novels (Birdman, The Treatment) and read all of the other books in the series. Unfortunately, the later books are a far cry from the quality of the first two. This is nowhere more apparent than in Wolf. This book bears all the signs of a writer who ran out of ideas. First, the entire spiel about a psycho-killer who captures a family in their house is a rehashing of The Treatment. Unfortunately, it is a lot less gripping and a lot less convincing in Wolf. What bugged me the most is that the motivations for the character’s actions are lazily constructed. The attack on the family is first motivated by the family patriarch’s dealings in the international arms trade, which is not the strongest of plot lines in a crime novel. Then, the attack turns out to be orchestrated by the daughter because of sibling rivalry (?). This creates a plot twist but requires the reader to suspend their disbelief quite a lot. The motivation for DI Caffery to be involved is even weaker. Hayder introduced the walking man as a mysterious figure that provides some insight into the inner conflicts of DI Caffery in the third book. But now, the walking man also acts as a deus ex machina to get Caffrey involved in this case. It just seems like a lazy way to motivate the protagonist to unwillingly take up the case and link the narrative to his troubled past. While the book is in no doubt gripping, it left me dissatisfied and I felt like the author does not respect the intelligence of the reader.