Mason is a former spec ops soldier who drinks too much and works construction. The Dead Wolves are the biker gang in charge of Quebec, and troubled brothers Raison and Rage are near the top of the Dead Wolves. But the Big Machine gang is beginning to encroach on their territory, and sudden leadership changes demand that the brothers step up. Negotiating the relationship between the two gangs requires them to cross the border in a delicate operation to rob a legal marijuana business in Colorado—one staffed by a security force of former military and police.
Rex Holloway’s THE WOLF AND THE LION’s greatest strength is clarity of vision. It knows exactly what it wants to do: put gruff outlaws on slick motorcycles, array them against veterans of the most elite units of the United States military, and watch them go head-to-head with high-tech weaponry. On this front, the text absolutely delivers—roughly the last fifth of the book is given over to this much-anticipated confrontation, in which crisply imagined and clearly described action spills breathlessly over from one scene into the next.
THE WOLF AND THE LION also does an excellent job of setting up the pieces for this encounter. A complex heist demands thoughtful planning, and some of the best scenes involve the bikers using their particular expertise to tackle a problem. Since the bikers have extensive automotive experience, one of them gets a job at the local garage where their adversaries have their vehicles serviced—leading to a short but riveting episode in which he sabotages a vehicle during a tire change while being watched. Moments like these establish THE WOLF AND THE LION as a solid entry in the action-heist genre.
The text does, nonetheless, have some faults. There is some excellent descriptive language, but at times, over-ambitious similes can become nonsensical; timber-framing like “ribs lining the gut of some massive whale” is an interesting image, but anatomically questionable and tonally out of place. The description can also get so out-of-hand that it obstructs the narrative. In an early scene, nearly six bikers in a row are all described in full—hair, face, body, clothes, down to the numerous patches giving their affiliations and rank—the sort of maneuver that’s efficiently possible on film but deadly in text. The narrative could use some trimming as well. Scenes with the Denver police offer some additional context, but their plotlines are nowhere near as interesting or crucial as those of the bikers and security forces; they could be fully excised without any loss of clarity. Some episodes are total failings of storytelling; a sex worker is introduced only to be murdered mere pages later, which adds some superficial complexity to the plot but ultimately has little to no bearing on how the final encounter transpires. Structural problems like these, along with a few basic problems like unresolved homophone errors (“baring” for “bearing,” “base” for “bass,” “site” for “sight,” “heal” for “heel”), require at least one more revision before THE WOLF AND THE LION can really shine. Nonetheless, readers who want motorcycles, guns, organized crime, and plenty of action won’t be disappointed.
Rex Holloway’s THE WOLF AND THE LION is well-imagined, action-packed, and, at times, surprisingly human.
~Dan Accardi for IndieReader