The House of Wolves

The House of Wolves (2023) is a mystery/thriller cowritten by James Patterson and Mike Lupica. The novel follows high school football coach Jenny Wolf who inherits her family’s billion-dollar empire after her father’s murder. Jenny and her siblings are suspects in the murder, and she must balance the tensions that arise from these circumstances with her new responsibilities. The novel was a New York Times bestseller.

Patterson is the author of several best-selling novels. He has won many awards for his writing, including the Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation and the National Humanities Medal. Lupica has been a sportswriter since the 1970s and has covered sports news for magazines and newspapers that include the New York Daily News and Esquire. He has also written several novels that have become bestsellers.

This guide is based on the 2023 Grand Central Publishing e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain references to murder, violence, suicide, racism, sexism, and addiction.

Plot Summary

Business tycoon Joe Wolf drowns when he is out on his yacht in the San Francisco Bay. At Joe’s memorial, his business rival John Gallo implies to the Wolf family that Joe was, in fact, murdered. Joe’s will stipulates that his daughter Jenny, who works as a high school football coach, will be the new chairman of Joe’s business, Wolf, Inc. Jenny accepts the role, which shocks her brothers—Jack, Danny, and Thomas—since she was estranged from her family prior to her father’s death. Jenny encounters resistance from her brothers and the National Football League (NFL) commissioner, Joel Abrams, regarding the Wolves, the professional football team that the family owns and that Jenny has also inherited; they encourage her to sell the team. When she refuses, Gallo meets with Jenny’s brother Danny and Abrams to discuss how to bring down Jenny.

The police begin investigating Joe Wolf’s death, and Detective Ben Cantor questions the Wolf siblings. When Thomas speaks to Cantor, Thomas implicates Jack in their father’s murder. Soon, Jenny reorganizes the Wolves, picking a new coach named Ryan Morrissey. To discredit her, the Tribune—the newspaper the Wolf family owns, which Jenny’s brother Jack runs—publishes a half-naked picture of Jenny that her old boyfriend took when they were in college. Jenny barely manages to keep her job at the high school where she teaches and refuses to apologize for the leaked photos. After this, Jenny learns that Danny plans to sell the Wolves to Gallo.

Jenny and the Wolves’ new coach try everything to turn the season around, including hiring Billy McGee, a man who was recently imprisoned, as their quarterback. Danny attempts to blackmail Morrissey with accusations that he sexually assaulted women at his workplace. Morrissey denies the accusations, and Jenny supports him. Jenny confronts Danny with evidence that he paid women to accuse Morrissey.

Tribune editor Megan Callahan tells Jenny about Jack’s plan to implicate Thomas in a football player’s death by claiming that Thomas supplied the man with drugs. Jenny fires Jack to protect Thomas. A few days later, Jack publishes the accusations against Morrissey on his new website called Wolf.com.

Jenny and Jack then have an argument, which concludes with her punching him in the face, unaware that reporter Seth Dowd is filming the confrontation. Following this, Jenny meets with a crisis management consultant named Bobby Erlich on the advice of her father’s influential friend (who she considers to be an uncle), Nick Amato, who lives in Florida.

One afternoon, Thomas calls Jenny to tell her that Jack and Danny may be in serious trouble. Before he can meet her to explain further, he is found dead at the Wolves’ stadium. At Thomas’s funeral, Jenny claims that he did not die by suicide, but that he was murdered. Jack accuses Gallo of organizing the murder, but Gallo denies it. Cantor tells Jenny that there were no prints found at the site of Thomas’s death.

Erlich arranges for Jenny to record an interview with Oprah Winfrey, which infuriates Gallo and her brothers. The meeting of NFL team owners follows this interview, and the oldest owners tell Jenny they will be voting for her, to even her surprise. After the vote, Jenny receives a single rose with an anonymous note taking credit for her win; Jenny knows it is from Nick.

Gallo is desperate to scare Jenny from the ownership of the Wolves, and he makes plans with his chief henchman Erik Mason to attack people close to Jenny, beginning with the high school team she coaches. Danny then tries to return to the Wolves and Jenny’s side, telling her that Gallo is in over his head.

Detective Cantor discovers that Jenny saw Joe on the night he died and he confronts her, and Jenny admits she saw her father but that he left quickly after a brief chat. Jenny then confronts Jack about his role in their father’s death, but Jack insists that he only tried to save his father from Gallo. Gallo meets Jenny and offers to buy the Wolves for $4 million—Jenny refuses. It is revealed that Gallo is under the thumb of a wealthy arms dealer named Michael Barr, who wants to own the Wolves to consolidate his influence in the city. Soon after, Gallo’s henchman Erik Mason kills Gallo—Mason is actually on Barr’s payroll. Mason then goes to Jenny’s house, insisting that she go with him to meet with Barr; however, he is surprised into backing off when she tells him that Nick has her back.

At the Wolves’ final game, McGee leads the team to victory. Afterward, Jenny is in a celebratory mood and heads to Detective Cantor’s house since she has romantic feelings for him; she spends the night with him and is photographed by Wolf.com reporters. As a result, Cantor loses his job.

Six weeks later, at the Super Bowl, NFL Commissioner Abrams is fired by the team owners, who have discovered he was working with Barr and Gallo. Mason asks Cantor to meet him, and when Cantor appears, Mason shoots him in the chest. Cantor is wearing a bullet-proof vest, which saves him; he shoots Mason back. Afraid for his life, Mason starts talking, and he admits that he killed Joe Wolf.

After the murder case is resolved, Jenny visits Nick in Florida. There, she learns that Nick is too old and that his son Vincent has been running his business—Vincent is the one who has been helping Jenny. Vincent discloses that the Amato family actually owns half of the Wolves and insists on a partnership; however, Jenny rejects this, determined to stand by her father’s motto: “Kill or be killed” (394).