THE INTERCEPT

Jan 16, 2013 by Washington Post book reviewers

Dick Wolf
Morrow
ISBN 978-0062064837
387400 pages
$276.99

Reviewed by Patrick Anderson, who regularly reviews thrillers and mysteries for The Washington Post.

About 40 years ago, a young advertising copywriter named Dick Wolf set out to write screenplays. He had three movies produced, then shifted to television, where he wrote for "Hill Street Blues" and "Miami Vice," among other shows. In 1990, he created a police drama called "Law & Order," which proceeded to run for 20 years, spawn numerous spinoffs, win countless prizes and earn him a fortune estimated at $250 million. He makes his home these days in Montecito, Calif., which is, as the saying goes, where God would live if he had the money.

Now, at 66, Wolf is publishing his first novel, and you can be sure that all across America, struggling novelists will devoutly hope and pray that this interloping TV tycoon falls on his face. No such luck. Wolf's "The Intercept," wherein al-Qaeda attempts another major attack on New York, is a smart, suspenseful, highly professional piece of work that should rank with the best of this year's thrillers.

In an early scene, Osama bin Laden, not long before his death, is plotting a new assault on the United States. He tells his lieutenants that he wants "a strike that will break the soul of the Western demon." Then it's July 1, 2011, and we're aboard a Swedish airliner headed for the United States. A young Muslim, armed with a knife and a fake bomb, tries to force his way into the cockpit but is overpowered by five passengers and a member of the flight crew. Among those who interrogate the hijacker is Detective Jeremy Fisk of the New York Police Department's Intelligence Division; he's Wolf's hero for this novel and a projected series.

As news of the failed hijacking reaches the nation, the five passengers and the flight attendant - The Six, they are soon dubbed - are hailed as heroes who saved hundreds of lives by stopping the terrorist from crashing the airliner in Manhattan, his admitted target. But Fisk is not so sure. He thinks the man is not very smart, had little chance of seizing control of the plane and might be a diversion from a more serious assault planned by al-Qaeda.

The immediate need is to find another suspect, supposedly a Saudi art dealer, who was on the plane. As this search develops, "The Intercept" becomes a first-rate police procedural. Wolf clearly has access to senior police officials, and he provides state-of-the art detail about how federal and local police would seek one man in a city of 8 million. They have pictures of the man, and their search for him is supported by hundreds of surveillance cameras poised around the city and computers that can scan for a particular face. Other computers monitor key words - like "bomb" or "explode" - spoken in Arabic on cellphones.

Wolf is good with characters, too. Fisk is a smart, tough detective who's also independently wealthy, has a swanky two-bedroom apartment on Sutton Place and is conveniently unmarried. My heart sank when he met cute with a sexy young detective who joined him on the case. But meeting cute is a hallowed pop-culture tradition, and the relationship soon becomes more interesting. The scene when they consummate their flirtation is quite nicely done. He's equally good with a triangle that arises among The Six, as two women compete for the favors of a handsome young Swede. Wolf has a sophisticated understanding of the games grown-ups play, even amid terrorist attacks.

He's also good on the terrorists themselves. We meet four who are part of an intricate Fourth of July plot to inflict spectacular damage at a dedication ceremony at Ground Zero. The terrorists' plan is a bit fanciful, but its telling is fascinating, and we are swept along. Wolf's terrorists are not monsters or madmen but real people whose religious beliefs make them eager to die a martyr's death. In our fiction, of course, the terrorists tend to lose, but Wolf raises disturbing questions about just how, in the real world, you win wars, at home or abroad, against people who aren't afraid to die.

Wolf's tale gallops to an exciting, disturbing conclusion. The storytelling skills he brought to our television screens prove quite transferable to the printed page, which is not to say "The Intercept" couldn't become a first-rate movie. It probably will.

Copyright 2013 Washington Post Writers Group

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TV's Dick Wolf tweaks approach for novel 'Intercept'

Dick Wolf, the creator of the Emmy-winning 'Law & Order' franchise is out with his first novel, 'Intercept.' (Photo: William Morrow)

The producer has been intrigued by domestic terrorism ever since scrubbing a miniseries in the aftermath of 9/11His first novel will be published Dec. 26Wolf is also working on two new series for NBC, plus projects for USA and TNT

In September 2001, television producer Dick Wolf (Miami Vice, Law & Order) was weeks away from starting principal photography on a miniseries about a terrorist attack on New York City. When the Twin Towers fell, he canceled the project, but it never curbed his craving to tell a story wrapped in domestic terrorism.

Eleven years later, he's releasing his debut novel, The Intercept (William Morrow, 387 pp., out Wednesday), about a detective's single-minded determination to thwart a New York City bombing.

The miniseries would have opened at an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. "It was a class of 10-year-olds with their fists raised, saying 'God is great' and 'Death to America,' " says Wolf in a phone interview from his office in Universal City. Calif. "The older brother of one of them is on his way to America to become a great hero." He and three other young men, Wolf says, were to set off a bomb under Times Square, killing 3,500 people.

Then, 9/11 happened. "I remember talking to Barry Diller and saying, 'Thank God we weren't shooting this when this happened,' and he said, 'No, Dick, thank God it didn't air and then this happened.' "

The cover of Dick Wolf's novel 'The Intercept.' (Photo: William Morrow)

Wolf tells a different story in The Intercept, which kicks off with passengers and a flight attendant thwarting the hijacking of a commercial airliner.

The plot foilers are hailed as heroes and are feted for their bravery. New York celebrates dodging a bullet, but Jeremy Fisk, a detective in the NYPD's Intelligence Division, has a bad feeling. His gut tells him the hijacking may have been a diversion. Especially after one of the plane's passengers disappears after deplaning. What follows is a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game, as Fisk tries to stay one step ahead of what he believes is the actual terror plot against America.

Early reviews of the book have been positive. Kirkus Reviews writes "Storytelling pro Wolf knows how to ratchet up tension and sustain it until the end." Publishers Weekly notes "the stunning plot twists, graphic violence, and frantic pace of the novel are more reminiscent of a season of 24."

"Anybody who says writing is writing, it's not true," says Wolf, 66, about what it was like to write a novel. "The canvasses get completely different-sized. I've written features and those are sort of like big paintings and television episodes are slightly smaller paintings and novels are kind of like the Sistine Chapel ceiling. It's a much broader canvas. I don't know if it's a different skill level, just a different set of storytelling ability."

Wolf says he's learned a lot about story structure over the years "and hopefully the book reflects that. I hate to make it obvious, but the first 25 pages are really very similar to the teaser in a television show. You do learn after 1,300 hours of television that people like certain things. I'm not selling it as great literature but, hopefully, it's a great ride. That's what I set out to do."

As he researched the book, what Wolf learned about how terrorists are hunted in the real world didn't shock him. Rather, he says, "it was reassuring. Tens of thousands of phone calls are monitored on a daily basis."

Fisk, who Wolf says is "an amalgam of a lot of people I've met over the years," will be featured in another novel, to be published late next year. This time, the plot will center around narcoterrorism.

Wolf, who set his novel as well as the original Law & Order and two of its spinoffs in New York, has lived in California for 37 years. But New York, where he was born, "is much more my emotional home than California. I love living here, but New York never gets out of your blood."

In addition to Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, in its 14th season, and this year's debut drama Chicago Fire, Wolf is working on myriad other TV projects.

He's awaiting NBC's go-ahead on two new series: an American adaptation of the BBC miniseries Injustice, which starred James Purefoy as a high-powered defense attorney who kills a client, and The Church, about a family who discovers that the upstanding organization they belong to is really a cult.

Also in development are a project for USA about an insurance investigator and a docudrama for TNT about cracking cold cases

But right now it's all about promoting The Intercept. "You won't be disappointed," Wolf says.

I cover books and television for USA Today. Favorite books: mysteries and thrillers especially noir crime and police procedurals. Favorite shows: The Walking Dead, The Good Wife, Masterpiece Mystery, Downton Abbey.

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