The Devil's Share

May 4, 2015
Stroby’s razor-sharp third Crissa Stone novel (after 2013’s Shoot the Woman First) takes the no-nonsense professional thief to L.A., to meet wealthy art collector Emile Cota. Cota has been asked to return priceless antiquities to their place of origin, but he has a buyer lined up and wants Crissa to “steal” them so that he can make the sale instead of returning them. In spite of careful planning, things go horrifically wrong, and Crissa finds herself on the run from Cota’s enforcer and even from her own team members. Crissa must go on the offensive to protect herself and a trusted friend from a sociopath who has no qualms about lethally tying up loose ends. We get small glimpses into Crissa’s fraught personal life, but she never lets it affect her work; she is a force to be reckoned with in this cinematic thriller, which wastes no words and packs a huge punch. Agent: Robin Rue, Writers House.

May 1, 2015
Crissa Stone's fourth caper involves stealing some priceless antiquities from an owner so obliging that he offers to pay her and helps her plan the job. Emile Cota has cut more than a few corners in amassing his collection. It's just his luck that by the time the buyer he'd lined up for a cache of antiquities he pinched is ready to take delivery, he's been identified and ordered to return his treasures to Iraq. Nothing daunted, he hires Crissa, whom he knows as Christine Wynn, to hijack them en route to their destination and arrange their delivery to the buyer. The job seems simple enough, since Randall Hicks, Cota's factotum and security chief, will provide all the inside information she can possibly use and help with the logistics. Crissa reaches out to retired driver Bobby Chance, who hooks her up with a pair of Irishmen; Hicks calls in his Marine buddy Sandy Sandoval; they meet, practice their routines, and wait for what promises to be a bloodless coup. Predictably, that's not how it works out, and in short order, the conspirators are dispersed to the four winds, at least some of them determined to eliminate the others and grab the brass ring before anyone can turn informant against them. As the body count rises, the focus sharpens to a duel between Crissa and Hicks. Guess who wins. Though Stroby (Shoot the Woman First, 2013, etc.) doesn't exactly break new ground, readers hungry for an old-fashioned double-strength heist gone wrong could hardly do better.

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June 1, 2015

Crissa Stone last pulled a theft over a year ago. Needing money, she agrees to rob an antiquities collector of his questionably obtained Iranian artifacts, but the logistics are a nightmare. This fourth series outing (after Shoot the Woman First) pits the resourceful Crissa against ruthless ex-military hit men.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2015
Professional thief Crissa Stone (Shoot the Woman First, 2013) hasn't worked in a year, but financial concerns and possibly boredom move her to accept a job from Emile Cota, a wealthy California art collector, who wants Crissa to rob him. Cota has been identified by the feds as possessing a trove of priceless Iraqi antiquities, but because the full story would embarrass thoseofficials who planned the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq, all Cota must do is quietly repatriate the artifacts. Crissa and Cota's personal assistant, Hicks, an ex-Marine who served in Iraq, meticulously plan the hijacking. But the actual event goes murderously wrong, and soon Crissa is being hunted by a hit squad of former marines who have become guns for hire. Stroby's prose is predictably lean and edgy. His Iraq War premise has plausibility, and his characters are all well sketched. Stroby is regularly compared to Elmore Leonard and other greats of hard-boiled crime, and The Devil's Share will only burnish that reputation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)