[2] The violent junk yard deaths of Hugo DiFalco and Dennis Houlihan from the NYPD Auto Squad trigger an investigation led by detectives Becky Neff and George Wilson.

The conversation turns to the topic of corrupt policemen, including rumors of Dick Neff, Becky's husband – implying that he's receiving money from certain groups.

Later on, it's learned that Dick accepted bribes from a gambling ring so that he could place his father, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, in a nursing home that offers him proper care, rather than a state hospital.

The infant's cry, however, is revealed to be a lure by a pack of creatures living in the building, who react to the detectives' incursion by attempting to separate the two.

[3][4] In their book Intersections, Professors Slusser and Rabkin comment that Strieber makes the supernatural an "explainable part of the real universe" and undercuts the fantastic to give a more scientific explanation.

[5] Don D'Ammassa praised the book form of Wolfen in his Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction, but commented that the film adaptation was "only intermittently loyal" to the novel.