The Fourth Rule

October 2, 2023
Bestseller Lindsay ratchets up the stakes for master thief Riley Wolfe in his nail-biting fourth thriller featuring the charismatic antihero (after 2022’s The Three-Edged Sword). Wolfe prides himself on committing impossible thefts, having once stolen a 12-ton statue during its public dedication. On a trip to London, he uncharacteristically falls for Caitlin O’Brian, a woman he meets by chance, takes on a date, and fails to ask for her phone number. To prolong his stay in London and increase his chances of running into Caitlin again, Wolfe plans a time-consuming heist: he’ll steal the Rosetta Stone from the British Museum. While plotting his strategy to make off with the nearly one-ton artifact, he receives help from an unexpected ally, but the real suspense comes from the introduction of Wolfe’s eponymous Fourth Rule: “Even if you’re the best there is, watch your back. Because someone better is coming.” That tease from the book’s opening section, combined with sporadic chapters depicting a shadowy adversary targeting Wolfe through enhanced AI tools, add a ticking clock element that supercharges the main heist. Some of Wolfe’s narration can feel a few degrees too glib, but Lindsay comes through with a satisfying ending that tees up future installments. Series fans will be captivated. Agent: Michael Carlisle, InkWell.

November 1, 2023
Brilliant crook Riley Wolfe returns for a fourth elaborately planned, nail-bitingly suspenseful heist, following Just Watch Me (2020), Fool Me Twice (2020), and Three-Edged Sword (2022). This time the target is the famed Rosetta Stone, the fragment that helped crack the code of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. It's an insanely valuable piece of history, guarded six ways from Sunday. Why does Riley want it, and how on Earth does he expect to get it? Lindsay, who's better known as the creator of the vigilante serial killer Dexter Morgan, is clearly having a great time with the Wolfe novels. The plots are intricate, the characters ever-so-slightly larger than life, the surprises plentiful. The likable rogue is a genre staple, but Lindsay hasn't given us a standard-issue character here. Riley is entirely unique, and entirely captivating. This series has the potential to be as successful as the Dexter series, as readers continue to discover it. Here's hoping it continues to many more books.

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