Wallace Stroby’s The Devil’s Share is the latest novel featuring one of the most compelling anti-heroes around today, heistwoman Crissa Stone. From the author's Q & A with Sonja Hartl of the German crime fiction magazine/website Polar Noir:SONJA HARTL: How did you develop the idea for COLD SHOT TO THE HEART? Why is your protagonist female?Learn more about the author and his novels at the official Wallace Stroby website and The Heartbreak Blog.
WALLACE STROBY: I’d always wanted to write an entire novel from the point of view of a career criminal, but someone with whom the reader might have a certain amount of sympathy. Part of my third novel, GONE ‘TIL NOVEMBER, was written from the perspective of an aging black hitman, while the rest was from the point-of-view of a female sheriff’s deputy and single mom in a rural Florida town, the only woman in an otherwise all-male department. With COLD SHOT TO THE HEART, I wanted to combine those two ideas, and have my criminal also be a woman in an overwhelmingly male environment. That raised all kinds of interesting possibilities.
SH: I have to admit that I am a little skeptical when male crime authors have female protagonists. Was it difficult for you to write a crime novel with a woman as a main character?
WS: Actually, I found it freeing in some ways, because a woman in that position would...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: Gone 'til November.
The Page 69 Test: Cold Shot to the Heart.
The Page 69 Test: Kings of Midnight.
The Page 69 Test: The Devil's Share.
--Marshal Zeringue