April 2014
Photo © Donna Washburn.
Wallace Stroby is an award-winning journalist and the author of the novels Shoot the Woman First, Kings of Midnight, Cold Shot to the Heart, Gone 'Til November, and The Barbed-Wire Kiss which was a finalist for the 2004 Barry Award for Best First Novel.
A New Jersey native, he's a lifelong resident of the Jersey Shore. For 13 years, he was an editor at The Newark Star-Ledger, Tony Soprano's hometown newspaper.
"Crissa's third is another superior thriller--fast, tough and nasty--without a single extra sentence."
—Kirkus Reviews
"As coolly efficient and professional as its heroine, this thriller evokes Donald Westlake’s Parker novels with lean storytelling that pauses only for meticulously detailed descriptions of criminals at work or in conflict."
—Publishers Weekly
"Another fast, taut winner from Stroby (GONE ‘TIL NOVEMBER, 2010) As for Crissa, she may be crime fiction's best bad girl ever."
—Kirkus Reviews, ***Starred Review***
"Tormented lives brutally intersect in Stroby's powerful thriller…While relentlessly probing the eternal mystery of why bright and capable women fall for dangerous losers, Stroby (THE HEARTBREAL LOUNGE) explores moral choices that leave his devastatingly real characters torn between doing nothing and risking everything."
—Publishers Weekly
"In a brilliant follow-up to his impressive debut (THE BARBED-WIRE KISS, 2003), Stroby continues the hard-boiled adventures of Harry Rane… [who] walks these mean streets perfectly at home with the icons: Spade, Marlowe, and Archer."
—Kirkus Reviews
"Hard-hitting prose and tidy plotting complicated by crime bosses, ex-girlfriends, pregnant wives, and bumptious Jersey-shore surroundings make for an excellent first mystery."
—Library Journal
"Stroby's dazzling debut stars the Grieving Ex-Cop, adds the Old Girl Friend Now Married to a Mobster, stirs in A Little Favor to Help Out a Best Friend - and still manages to wake us up like the slap of a wave on the New Jersey shore."
—Publishers Weekly, ***Starred Review***
The Devil's Share by
It's been a year since professional thief Crissa Stone last pulled a job, and she's spent that time under the radar, very carefully not drawing attention to herself. That kind of life is safe, but it's boring, and it's lonely, and it's not very lucrative. So when Crissa starts to get antsyâe"and low on fundsâe"she agrees to act as a thief-for-hire, partnering with a wealthy art collector to steal a truckload of plundered Iraqi artifacts before they're repatriated to their native country. But what's supposed to be a "give-up" robbery with few complications quickly turns deadly. Soon Crissa is on the run again, with both an ex-military hit squad and her own partners-in-crime in pursuit. And what should be the easiest job of her careerâe"robbing a man who wants to be robbedâe"might just turn out to be the most dangerous.
Shoot the Woman First by
A half million dollars in drug proceeds, guarded by three men with automatic weapons. For Wallace Stroby's determined heroine, professional thief Crissa Stone, and her team, stealing it was the easy part. But when the split goes awry in a blaze of gunfire, Crissa finds herself on the run with a duffel bag of stolen cash, bound by a promise to deliver part of the take to the needy family of one of her slain partners. In pursuit are the drug kingpin's lethal lieutenants and a former Detroit cop with his own deadly agenda. They think the money's there for the taking, for whoever finds her first. But Crissa doesn't plan to give it up without a fight, even as her mission of mercy puts her and a young child in mortal danger, with forces on both sides of the law closing in. After all, a debt is a debtâe¦even if it has to be paid in blood. WithShoot the Woman First, Wallace Stroby delivers another powerful, lyrical novel, his third featuring one of the most original female characters in hardboiled fiction.
Kings of Midnight by
Crissa Stone is a career criminal who has pulled a number of impressive heists by knowing how to keep her mouth shut and her temper in check. Still, as good as she is, she wants to get out of the life. All she needs is one last big score, enough to bribe her lover's way out on parole, set up a safe and stable new life, and get her daughter back. However, things keep going wrong, like when her last two partners lost their cool and fought over the take instead of walking away $150K richer. The mess they made of the job and each other has put her on the run again. She's not the only one. Benny Roth, a former mobster, has been straight for years, but now he has his own problems. A face from the past has popped up to tell him that boss Joey Dio is finally dead and to ask about the five million dollars that Joey was rumored to have stashed away years ago. Benny denies knowing anything about it and claims he's out of the business. That may be what he says, but he's willing to risk almost everything for one last shot. With the law and mobsters on the lookout and five million dollars on the line, it isn't long before Crissa and Benny find themselves on a collision course that neither of them can avoid. This hard-boiled world, where the stakes---and the risks---are always high, unfolds at breakneck speed in Kings of Midnight, another dark and thrilling masterwork of crime fiction from Wallace Stroby.
