Crying Wolf [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Peter Abrahams (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2001

It was more than a white lie. It was deception on a grand scale. But the motive was admirable - to save the bright future of a deserving young man. And the victim, too, was deserving - an arrogant billionaire who would hardly notice his loss, crumbs from a vast fortune. All the plotters needed was a believable story, desperate and frightening, but false. Nothing bad was supposed to happen. They were only crying wolf. But what if the wolf were real? For Nat, a shining all-American boy with blue-collar roots, acceptance to New England's exclusive Inverness College seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. The chilling events that follow are nothing like what he imagined. It begins at Christmas break. Nat, unable to afford going home for the holidays, remains alone on the deserted campus. Alone - until he meets Grace and Izzie Zorn, twin sisters who, although biologically identical, are utterly different. Thrown off by the irresistible attraction of this astonishing pair, Nat's moral compass starts to fail him. How could it not, as he enters a seductive new world of private Caribbean islands, personal jets, and endless possibility? A world where folly, even crime, now seems right. When classes resume, Nat and the twins fall under the influence of a charismatic philosophy professor with dangerous ideas and a secret of his own. His teachings will be used to justify a bold scheme, plotted deep beneath the school in the lair of a forgotten social club, banished for almost a century. But someone in the underground shadows is listening, someone who thinks he deserves a future just as bright as Nat's. Suddenly a risky but basically innocent game will take a horrifying turn.

--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Crying Wolf is a suspense novel--it says so right on the cover. In Stephen King's blurb of praise, Peter Abrahams is his "favorite American suspense novelist." That should mean nail-biting action--what's lurking around that corner?--eerie coincidence, disturbing glances into the depths of human evil, right? Well, yes. But Abrahams's novel is also a remarkably sensitive examination of a naive young man's emergence from an insular environment into a world more disorienting than he'd ever thought college could be.

Nat is an enormously likable protagonist. His decision to leave his small hometown in Colorado to attend Inverness College, an equally small but very prestigious liberal arts institution, will force him to question attitudes and ways of life he had always taken for granted. But such novelty can be disturbing as well as rewarding: when he meets fellow students Grace and Izzie Zorn, a pair of twins born with any number of silver spoons in their identically lovely mouths, Nat must struggle to reconcile their matter-of-fact acceptance of the omnipresence of money with his own frugal existence. Both dreamer and pragmatist, Nat immediately captures the reader's sympathy.

Abrahams frames Nat's growing awareness of the complexity of existence against the life and times of Freedy Knight, a thief, bodybuilder, and con artist for whom complexity means figuring out a method of acquiring both money and women. Freedy is Abrahams's masterpiece, and he plays with the convention of free indirect discourse to bring the reader right into Freedy's supremely self-satisfied and remarkably funny mind. After a stunning failure as a pool maintenance engineer in California--"Women liked brains, no getting around it. Brains meant sensitivity. For example, floating in the water near the filter was a little furry thing. 'Poor little fella,' you could say to some woman who happened to come by the pool. That was all it took: sensitivity. Combine that with the ripped part, the buff part, the diesel part--that bare-chested dude, wearing cut-offs and workboots, the skimmer held loose in his hands, was he himself, after all--and what did you have? The kind of dude women went crazy for, absolutely no denying that."--Freedy brings his arrogance and a powerful methamphetamine addiction back east. It's only a matter of time before his path and Nat's will cross.

When Freedy (searching for dorm room goodies to fence) and the Inverness trio both stumble upon the underground rooms of a long-gone secret society, and when his mother's unemployment means that Nat can no longer afford to stay at Inverness, greed, nonchalance, and fear unite. The three students are on a collision course with a desperately charismatic criminal; the twins' well-intentioned plan to keep Nat at Inverness by staging a kidnapping for ransom will go horribly awry. Nothing bad was supposed to happen: they were only crying wolf. Unfortunately, sometimes the wolf is real. --Kelly Flynn --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Edgar nominee Abrahams (Lights Out; A Perfect Crime) returns with a suspense novel built around kidnapping, extortion and youthful stupidity. Nat is the eager, sports-loving valedictorian of his small-town Colorado high school. With his $2,000 prize in an essay contest, he can just barely afford to enroll at Inverness, an elite New England college. There he meets Grace and Izzie Zorn, twins from a wealthy Manhattan family, who bring Nat home with them for the Christmas holiday and show him tall buildings, fine wines and decadent parties. Meanwhile, a steroid-pumped, speed-freak criminal named Freedy flees his job cleaning swimming pools in L.A. after a botched rape and assault. Heading home to Inverness to live off his perpetually stoned mother, he discovers his next source of income: technological appliances from the college. Freedy begins ripping them off and fencing them to a local hood, using a network of tunnels beneath the school to get in and out. Nearly stumbling into Freedy one night, Nat and the girls discover a hidden room full of old books and booze, which becomes their hideaway. When Nat's mother is fired from her job, Nat fears he'll have to drop out of Inverness, so the girls (both have slept with him by now) plot to stage their own kidnapping, earmarking the "ransom" for Nat's tuition. Mr. Zorn quickly thwarts their plan, but Freedy, who has been spying on Nat and the girls' secret meetings, hatches his own, far more dangerous, kidnapping scam. Now, when the situation is serious, Nat's vain pleas for help give the novel its name. Abrahams's plot moves too slowly to please readers looking for danger, verve and action, and his characters are too crudely drawn to succeed as examples of dissolute late-adolescent elites. With his foul language and his 'roid and meth-driven delusions of grandeur, Freedy makes for an interesting villain, but his rages can't sustain the book. Nat remains too naive for too long, his girlfriends are two-dimensional and a distracting subplot (involving Nat's philosophy professor, Mr. Zorn and Freedy's mother) is left unresolved. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 439 pages
• Publisher: Wheeler Publishing; Lrg edition (March 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158724005X
• ISBN-13: 978-1587240058
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,176,921 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Peter Abrahams - "criminally gifted" according to the New York Times Book Review - is the author of 27 novels. These include the New York Times bestselling Echo Falls mystery series for middle-graders (DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE, BEHIND THE CURTAIN, INTO THE DARK) and REALITY CHECK (2009) for teens. Among his adult books are OBLIVION (Shamus prize finalist), THE FAN (made into a movie with Robert DeNiro) and LIGHTS OUT (Edgar award finalist). DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE was a finalist for the Edgar best young adult mystery award and won the Agatha in the same category. BEHIND THE CURTAIN and INTO THE DARK were Agatha finalists. In her Cleveland Plain Dealer review of NERVE DAMAGE (2007), Michelle Ross wrote: "I swear, if one more literary person says in that oh-so-condescendng tone, 'Oh, I don't read ... mysteries,' I'm going to take a novel by Peter Abrahams and smack him on his smug little head." REALITY CHECK won the best young adult mystery Edgar award in 2010. ROBBIE FORESTER AND THE OUTLAWS OF SHERWOOD STREET, January 2012, is first in a new middle-grade series about a twelve-year-old Robin Hood in contemporary Brooklyn.
As Spencer Quinn, Abrahams also writes the New York Times bestselling Chet and Bernie mystery series: DOG ON it, THEREBY HANGS A TAIL, TO FETCH A THIEF, and THE DOG WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. He has a website - peterabrahams.com; and so does Chet - chetthedog.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I couldn't put it down., March 22, 2003

By 

Rebekah Sue Harris (West Haven, CT USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crying Wolf (Mass Market Paperback)

I'd purchased "Crying Wolf" for a friend at work. Because he was out of the office and I'd run out of books, I borrowed this from his stack. I actually went to work half an hour early the day after I started reading it, so that I could finish the book before he came in to claim his prize.

I was looking for the suspense since, on the cover, Stephen King is quoted as having said that Peter Abrahams is his "favorite American suspense novelist." I really didn't find suspense. However, I found a good plot with likeable characters. While this book takes place in college - a boarding school, if you will - I kept thinking that Inverness was NOT Hogwarts...

Nat is a young man who wins a scholarship that takes him from his working-class town to Inverness College. Freedy is a young bodybuilder thug. Their paths parallel but never quite meet until...

Nat happens upon Grace and Izzie, very rich twin sisters who attend Inverness (and very different from Patti, his hometown sweetheart). The three students hatch a kidnapping scheme to try to obtain some much-needed money from the girls' father. However, as we learned as children, if you Cry Wolf often enough, when a crisis emerges no one will believe you.

While seldom actually "suspenseful," "Crying Wolf" was nonetheless a good book and a good purchase. I do recommend it; and I will be looking for more books by Peter Abrahams

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Quietly suspensful, August 8, 2002

By 

mellion108 (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Crying Wolf (Mass Market Paperback)

Raised by a struggling but supportive single mother, Nat finds himself the hero of his small town when he wins an essay contest that provides a meager scholarship. Nat says goodbye to his high school sweetheart, kisses his mom, and heads off to Inverness, a small college packed with the pampered offspring of the privileged. A chance encounter involving a fish aptly named Lorenzo the Magnificent throws Nat together with Izzie and Grace Zorn who are incredibly wealthy, incredibly beautiful twin sisters. Izzie and Grace are daring and captivating, and they do not suffer from the ordinary worries that plague Nat (like how to meet the next tuition payment without his mom losing her house). The three become close friends, and together they find some secret underground passages which become integral in their scheme to help Nat stay in school.

Then along comes Freedy--Friedrich--Knight. Freedy isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he considers himself a dashing, irresistable, and super intelligent sort of guy. Unfortunately, one of his more serious blunders nearly gets him shot and forces him to flee back east to hide out with his mom. Of course, Freedy and the trio cross paths, which places all of them in jeopardy.

Perhaps it is a bit misleading for this book to be labeled a suspense novel. Sure, there is some suspense, but the beauty of this book lies in the coming-of-age story of Nat. Freedy is an intriguing character, and the twins are funny, saucy, and more complicated than they first appear. Nat's observations of his surroundings are both touching and humorous, and it is interesting to see how this small town poor boy carves his niche in the world of the rich. Combine this all with the annoying Professor Leo Uzig, and the story can stand on its characters alone. Peppered throughout the novel are references to Nietzsche who would most likely get quite a chuckle out of the quest for meaning that each of these characters goes through.

Don't pick this one up expecting to lose sleep to figure out "who dunnit." This isn't a hair raising thriller. I liked it for the character development. The "action" of the novel doesn't seem to be the focal point but rather the result of all these characters coming together. I also liked that Abrahams does not go for the Hollywood ending so typical of "suspense" novels these days. I thought the book was worth the price even though it turned out to be more of a dramatic character study rather than a nail-biting thriller. This is my first book by Abrahams, and it most certainly won't be my last.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Oh, what a tangled web we weave . . ., October 11, 2001

By 

Diane Davis (San Ramon, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crying Wolf (Mass Market Paperback)

I love it when I have no idea where a book is going, which in a case like this is only possible if you don't read the blurb on the dust jacket. Stephen King's recommendation of the author persuaded me that the trip would be worthwhile, and it certainly was. Interesting characters, nail-biting suspense, and clever parallels among very different people - some smart, some terminally stupid - as they attempt to put Nietzsche's philosophy into practical use. A winner!