2 BY WALLACE STROBY

Another two from the stacks; this time Wallace Stroby. Stroby is the author of six books in total; a two book series (Harry Rane), a three book series (Crissa Stone) and a standalone novel.

Gone Til November is the standalone and Cold Shot is the first Crissa Stone book. Like Brad Smith last week, his titles cry out to me to be read – The Barbed-Wire Kiss, The Heartbreak Lounge, Kings of Midnight and Shoot the Woman First are his others.

Stroby has won awards for his journalism and has previously been a newspaper editor at The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey. New Jersey is where he hails from and I have provisionally pencilled him in for this state on my US State Reading Challenge; something which is currently a very long work in progress.    

  

His books encompass elements that are appealing to me in my reading……….retired cops, criminals, money, drugs, mobsters, friendships, loyalty, shootings, hitmen, vengeance, card games, robberies, prison, career criminals and rogue cops.

Cold Shot to the Heart

Crissa Stone is a pro. She never works close to home, never works with the same crew, and never rushes a job. Those are the rules her mentor and lover taught her. But now he's up for parole and needs some money to help grease the wheels. There's an illegal card game set for a week from now. The take? As much as seven figures. Desperate, Crissa slaps a plan together. It's robbery, not murder. Then one of her crew shoots a player, a man with connections to hitman Eddie the Saint. Recently released from prison, Eddie could use the work, not to mention all that money.

Gone Til November

It's late at night when Florida sheriff's deputy Sara Cross arrives at the scene of a roadside shooting along a deserted highway. Another deputy, Billy Flynn, her former partner, who also happens to be her former lover, has fatally shot a twenty-two-year-old man during what started out as a routine traffic stop, and she's the first to arrive on the scene. He claims that the man pulled a gun, and that when he didn't respond to Billy's commands to drop it, Billy shot him. Billy is clearly upset, shaken up; Sarah sees the gun in the dead man's hand and the bag of illegal weapons in the trunk of his car and believes Billy's actions were justified.

Up north in New Jersey, Mikey-Mike runs a major drug operation and is tightening his hold on the competition, making a deal with a new supplier. Morgan, a middle-aged enforcer for Mikey who's been in the life too long, would like to make one last score, walk away, and retire for good. Mike asks Morgan to head to Florida to find out what's holding up his new deal, and Morgan sees the job as a possibility for his last big payday.

As more details of the roadside shooting emerge with Sara's investigation, and as Morgan follows the trail Mikey lays out for him, the two storylines begin to merge into a much darker, more menacing scenario than either Morgan or Sara imagined. Sara, in order to protect herself and her son, must follow the truth no matter where it leads.

Acclaimed crime writer Wallace Stroby delivers a gripping novel that is part modern noir,