The House of Wolfe: A Border Noir

An ambitious criminal named Galan has organized the meticulous kidnapping of a wedding party from a Mexico City mansion, seeking a $5 million ransom within 24 hours, in the latest addition to Blake’s Wolfe Family saga. Jessie Wolfe is one of the bridesmaids, and her family members don’t trust Galan to free his captives unharmed. Rarely does a thriller maintain such a relentlessly suspenseful atmosphere, and it’s a mark of reader DeSantos’s talent that he sets a pace that keeps up the tension without exhausting either the listener or himself. As the novel shifts from an impersonal observation of the crime and its aftermath to the very personal narration of Rudy Wolfe, the family’s main fixer, DeSantos dutifully switches from hard-edged rendition to a hard-boiled focus on finding the kidnappers and rescuing Jessie. Retribution will come, Rudy tells us. But maybe not. In any case, DeSantos gives voice to an assortment of characters—male and female, Mexican and American—whom he effectively and effortlessly switches between as they become engaged in a chillingly exciting, violent confrontation between Wolfes and Galan’s warriors. A Grove/Atlantic/Mysterious hardcover. (Mar.)