52 pages • 1 hour read
James Patterson, Mike LupicaThe House of Wolves
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 19-43Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary
Ben Cantor meets Thomas Wolf on his late father’s yacht, at Thomas’s request. Cantor questions Thomas about his relationship with his father and siblings. Thomas implies that he thinks Jack is responsible for Joe Wolf’s death. Cantor remains suspicious of Thomas.
Chapter 20 Summary
The Wolves lose dramatically after coach Rich Kopka decides to bench quarterback Ted Skyler in favor of a rookie player. When Jenny asks him to reconsider benching Ted, Kopka loses his temper and calls Ted her boyfriend. Jenny fires him.
Chapter 21 Summary
Later, Jenny hires Ryan Morrissey, the Wolves’ former offensive coordinator who was fired after he broke Kopka’s nose. She reveals that she has made Thomas the new general manager of the team after she fired Mike Sawchuck. Morrissey compares her management style to kamikaze missions.
Chapter 22 Summary
The next morning, the Tribune publishes a half-naked picture taken of Jenny that was taken by her college boyfriend. Although embarrassed, she refuses to hide, and goes for a run, joking with the reporters camped outside her house as she passes.
Chapter 23 Summary
Over breakfast, Danny and Jack discuss their plan to take Jenny down. Jack plans to publish more photos of Jenny, and Danny hopes they will inspire the other team owners to vote against her. Jack jokes about killing Jenny and Thomas.
Chapter 24 Summary
Thomas helps Jenny escape the swarm of reporters at her house and encourages her not to preemptively quit. He offers to beat up her college boyfriend who leaked the pictures, and he then promises to retaliate by leaking information about Jack and Danny.
Chapter 25 Summary
Jenny visits Jack’s newsroom and sees him talking to his managing editor, who Thomas believes he’s sleeping with. Unintimidated by her brother, Jenny compares his newspaper to a tabloid and encourages him to try harder to take her down.
Chapter 26 Summary
Jenny meets with the principal of Hunters Point High, expecting to be fired. He admits that students’ parents were upset about the pictures in the paper and wanted her to leave the school, but he assures her that he has no plans to fire her.
Chapter 27 Summary
Jenny refuses to apologize or discuss the photos with reporters. At Hunters Point games, her players shield her from reporters with their bodies. At Wolves games, she is protected by security. Ted tells her that Danny plans to sell the team to Gallo once Jenny is removed from power.
Chapter 28 Summary
Reporter Seth Dowd visits Jack and shares the unreleased toxicology report from DeLavarious Harmon, the Wolves’ late star rookie. The report reveals that he had performance enhancing drugs and fentanyl in his system when he died. Dowd claims that Thomas was alone with Harmon on the day he died.
Chapter 29 Summary
Jenny is reluctant to trust Ted after he leaked their conversation to Seth Dowd. He encourages her to give up on her ownership of the Wolves, but Jenny is confident that she can get the votes from the other owners. She places a call to an unknown person—who is later revealed to be her uncle—to ask for his help.
Chapter 30 Summary
Jenny and the Wolves’ new head coach Ryan Morrissey spend late nights trying to turn the season around. Morrissey suggests replacing Ted with a younger quarterback. Jenny laughs in disbelief when she learns the player with whom Morrissey is hoping to replace Ted. They call Thomas to tell him, and he is surprised to learn that the athlete is out of prison.
Chapter 31 Summary
Jenny storms into Danny’s office and asks whether he has plans to sell the Wolves to Gallo. Danny denies it, but he insists that it’s not her business and that her ownership is an embarrassment. Jenny promises to fight back.
Chapter 32 Summary
Jenny and Morrissey offer the position of quarterback to Billy “Money” McGee, a 26-year-old former player who was recently imprisoned after drug and gun charges. McGee agrees to regular drug-testing, insisting that he needs to return to football.
Chapter 33 Summary
Jenny brings Money McGee to practice with a select group of Hunter Point High football players. McGee is energetic and encouraging, but he swears openly in front of the students, who are thrilled to be with him.
Chapter 34 Summary
The Tribune criticizes Jenny’s hiring of Money McGee; the article even includes a quote from Ted. The NFL commissioner threatens to suspend McGee, but Thomas defends him. Later, Ben Cantor accuses Thomas of lying about his whereabouts on the day Joe died.
Chapter 35 Summary
Thomas explains that he used the yacht club as a place to have sex with women and that he had a rendezvous on the day of his father’s death. Cantor remains suspicious, and before leaving, he asks Thomas about his mother.
Chapter 36 Summary
Jenny finds solace in her high school practices. When she decides to surprise her mother Elise for a dinner date, she is shocked to find Gallo at the house, kissing her mother’s hand. Jenny worries that even her mother isn’t on her side.
Chapter 37 Summary
Jack meets privately with Gallo and Mayor Charlie Spooner. Jack apologizes for publishing stories embarrassing the mayor. Gallo threatens to take the newspaper away from Jack if he doesn’t destroy Jenny and secure the team.
Chapter 38 Summary
Commissioner Abrams urges Danny to fire Money McGee and release Harmon’s toxicology report. Danny reveals that the news will imply Jenny knew Thomas was with Harmon the day he died when she made him general manager. Then, Danny approaches Ryan Morrissey with a proposal.
Chapter 39 Summary
Jenny reviews the team’s finances in order to determine whether they can afford the trades Thomas is proposing. She is grateful she can trust Thomas, knowing her mother and brothers are involved with Gallo. Then, Morrissey unexpectedly arrives at her house late at night and says he needs to quit his position as coach.
Chapter 40 Summary
Danny reveals to his mother Elise that he blackmailed Morrissey with accusations that he forced himself on women in his workplace. Danny implies that the accusations are false, but that the MeToo movement will ensure Jenny is forced to fire him. Elise tells him that the family has secrets to hide, and Danny agrees.
Chapter 41 Summary
Morrissey and Jenny stay up late into the night as he explains the accusations against him and denies them. The next morning, Jenny wonders if he’s interested in sleeping with her. She agrees to support him against the accuser, who she believes actually slept with Danny.
Chapter 42 Summary
Jenny recalls how her father used to pit her and her brothers against each other. She receives a call from her uncle, who tells her to check her email. Armed with unspecified blackmail evidence, she confronts Danny.
Chapter 43 Summary
In an interview with Cantor, Joe Wolf’s second wife Rachel insists that she had nothing to do with Joe’s death and that she was genuinely surprised by his will. She says that Thomas had threatened to kill Joe in the past.
Chapters 19-43 Analysis
This section of The House of Wolves deploys a number of topical cultural references that firmly establish a contemporary setting for the novel. These precisely dated cultural references are designed to show readers in 2023 that the world of the novel is the same world that they inhabit. For instance, in Chapter 34, sports reporter Seth Dowd references the “storming [of] the US Capitol” in a column about Money McGee (124). This reference to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol Building firmly establishes a mid-2020s setting. Similarly, in Chapter 36, Jenny claims to prefer to “lean on Uber Eats” rather than cooking for one (132). The reference to the food delivery app enhances the contemporary setting of the novel. Later, Danny says that his mother is “playing her imagined role as the queen in her own version of The Crown” (144), referencing the Netflix TV show focused on Queen Elizabeth and the House of Windsor. This pop culture reference allows the authors of this novel to explicitly compare the power struggles within the Wolf family to the British royal family, while also reminding the audience of the explicitly contemporary setting. These topical cultural references are intended to establish a contemporary setting—2021 at the earliest—for the action of the novel.
The contemporary setting also enables the authors to comment on the current cultural moment, especially the #MeToo movement. Across the novel, multiple characters criticize the #MeToo movement, which was first established around 2017. The movement encourages people, especially women, to be open about their experiences with sexual harassment and assault (See: Background). In the novel, NFL Commissioner Abrams describes the movement as “shit,” while Danny Wolf claims that it “doesn’t matter” whether the accused men are innocent or guilty and that the movement ruins lives. Although Abrams and Danny are both clear villains, the novel frequently repeats their perspectives on the movement. Also, the fact that Coach Morrissey is in fact innocent and being blackmailed by a greedy woman also shows the novel’s perspective that mercenary or vengeful women can exploit the movement to ruin innocent men’s lives.
This section of The House of Wolves also points to the novel’s thematic interest in Corruption and Prejudice in Professional Sports. In order to pressure Jenny out of her ownership position, her brother Jack and professional rival Gallo publish half-naked pictures of her taken years ago by her college boyfriend on the front page of the Tribune. The fact that these leaked photos are considered enough to push her out of her position highlights the misogyny of the industry. The novel later reveals that the woman accusing Morrissey of assault was, in fact, having an affair with Danny, her boss. The fact that the president of the Wolves has had sexual affairs with his subordinates also suggests a culture of misogyny in professional sports. Further, NFL Commissioner Abrams’s attitude toward his Black players shows that a culture of racism exists in professional football. Abrams calls Billy “Money” McGee a “skid-row bum” (138) and compares him to O. J. Simpson, an accused murderer. Abrams’s racist dismissal of a formerly incarcerated player represents the racism in professional sports. The novel’s depiction of NFL culture suggests that racism and misogyny are both active in professional sports.
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