Wallace Stroby

Wallace Stroby is an award-winning journalist and the author of the novels Kings of Midnight, Cold Shot to the Heart, Gone 'Til November, The Heartbreak Lounge, and The Barbed-Wire Kiss.

His new novel is Shoot the Woman First.

From Stroby's Q & A with J. Kingston Pierce for Kirkus Reviews:

When you sat down to write your first Crissa Stone novel, 2011’s Cold Shot to the Heart, was it your protagonist or your plot line that came first? Had you long wanted to compose a series featuring a female lead?

I’d had the general plot line in my head for many years, and took a crack at it awhile back with a few brief chapters that didn’t really go anywhere. After 2010’s Gone ’Til November, I was interested in writing about a female protagonist again, especially one operating in an all-male world, and having to prove herself on a regular basis. It was the merger of those two ideas that led to Cold Shot.

Having done your research into professional female criminals, how is Crissa typical of the breed?

There’s an excellent scholarly book called Armed Robbers in Action: Stickups and Street Culture, by Richard T. Wright and Scott H. Decker, published by Northeastern University Press. They interviewed a wide cross-section of career criminals, from street-corner stickup boys to high-end commercial armed robbers. And of the woman they talked to, about 90 percent of them had been brought into that life by a man, usually a lover/mentor who was older than them. That idea became, for me, one of...[read on]

Learn more about the author and his novels at the official Wallace Stroby website and The Heartbreak Blog.

The Page 69 Test: Gone 'til November.

The Page 69 Test: Cold Shot to the Heart.

Writers Read: Wallace Stroby (February 2011).

The Page 69 Test: Kings of Midnight.

--Marshal Zeringue