Is Wolf based on a book? BBC One crime drama is adapted from final novel in series by late best-selling author

BBC One dark crime drama Wolf stars Iwan Rheon, Ukweli Roach, Sacha Dhawan, Juliet Stevenson, and Owen Teale. The six part series was filmed in Wales last year.

The series has been adapted for the screen and is based on the final novel in a popular British crime series, but is the first of these books to get the TV treatment. 

The adaptation comes almost a decade after the book was first published, and many fans of the novel series will be hoping for the BBC to adapt the earlier books for the screen as well.

As Wolf airs on BBC One now, this is what you need to know about the book series it is based on, and which other novels from the series have been adapted.

Who wrote Wolf?

The new BBC crime thriller Wolf is adapted from the novel of the same name published by Mo Hayder in 2014. Wolf is the final novel in Hayder’s Jack Caffery series and follows a detective on the hunt for the man who killed his 10-year-old brother 30 years ago, whilst also trying to reach a wealthy family who are being terrorised in their own home by a psychopath.

Hayder was a millionaire British author who sold more than 1.3 million copies of her novels, some of which have been adapted into films. Prior to becoming an author, she was a model and comedy actor, and appeared in Bottle Boys, Are You Being Served?, and The Two Ronnies.

Wolf was adapted for the screen by Megan Gallagher who has previously written on Norwegian crime shows Grenseland, and Seizure, and AppleTV thriller Suspicion. 

What are the other books in the Jack Caffery series?

Wolf is actually the last novel in Hayder’s detective series and the first to be adapted into a TV show. There are seven books in the Jack Caffery series - they are: Birdman (1999), The Treatment (2001), Ritual (2008), Skin (2009), Gone (2010), Poppet (2013), and Wolf (2014).

Two of these books, The Treatment and Ritual were adapted into Belgian language drama films starring Geert Van Rampelberg as the detective.

The first six books in the series feature several of the same characters, but Wolf shares only two characters - Detective Caffery and The Walking Man, a local vagrant - and can be read as a standalone novel. 

Therefore, those watching the adaptation would not need to have read the book series to follow the show.  

What other books did Mo Hayder write?

Aside from the Jack Caffery series, Hayder wrote three stand-alone novels - thriller Tokyo, detective horror work Pig Island, and dark thriller Hanging Hill. 

Hayder also wrote the first instalment of what was expected to be an epic sci-fi series, The Book of Sand, under the pseudonym Theo Clare. Her follow-up novel, The Book of Clouds, was unfinished.

What happened to Mo Hayder?

Hayder was diagnosed with motor neurone disease in December 2020 and died from complications arising from the illness in July 2021. The Book of Sand was published one month after Hayder died.

All episodes of Wolf are available to watch now on BBC iPlayer