Wallace Stroby – författare

Half a million dollars in drug proceeds, guarded by three men with automatic weapons—for 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 full 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 debt—even if it has to be paid in blood.

With Shoot the Woman First, Wallace Stroby delivers another powerful, lyrical novel, his third featuring one of the most original female characters in hard-boiled fiction.

Crissa Stone is a career criminal. A complete pro, she never works too close to her New York City home, rarely signs on with the same crew, and never rushes a job. These are the rules that have kept her from getting caught, from doing time. They’re the rules her mentor and lover taught her, rules he didn’t follow as closely as he should have. Now he’s up for parole, and Crissa needs to come up with some real money real fast to help grease the wheels.

Word is there’s an illegal card game set for less than a week from now. The take? As much as seven figures. Desperate, Crissa slaps together a plan and a crew.

It’s robbery, not murder. But when one of her crew loses his cool and they have to abandon the plan, she catches the attention of Eddie the Saint. A hit man recently released from prison, Eddie is no less of a pro than Crissa, and he could use the work—not to mention all that money.

Wallace Stoby, one of the most talented writers working in crime fiction today, has written a tight, propulsive story that will hold readers captive until well after all the crooks have fled the scene.

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. But things keep going wrong, like when her last two partners lost their cool and fought over the take instead of walking away $150,000 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 $5 million 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 $5 million 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.

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 antsy—and low on funds—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 career—robbing a man who wants to be robbed—might just turn out to be the most dangerous.