In Wallace Stroby’s latest Cold Shot to the Heart Crissa Stone is a no-nonsense thief of the ilk Michael Mann tends to makes his best films about, (Thief anybody? Heat?). She’s hard-nosed and hard-boiled without being a Frank Miller-esque cartoon. She’s a professional. She knows what she’s doing and she doesn’t mess around with amateurs. Lately though, she’s not getting the breaks. Haul estimations seem high across the board while her mentor and former lover is three years into an eight year stretch in Texas. They don’t mess around in the Texas penal system. His stay is one that could probably be cut short by a parole recommendation and she needs to come up with a couple hundred thousand dollars to help convince an attorney to make that happen. So what does she do?
Yeah, she takes an iffy job. It’s gotta come together a lot faster than she’d like, but she’s comfortable with her crew and confident in her own capabilities. Perhaps you like yelling don’t go into the attic at movie screens or open books, and this is the point where you can insert that impulse, but me, I’m always encouraging ill-advised behavior from the characters I’m investing in, so I kept my mouth shut – I might’ve even given the go-ahead nod to her at this point. They’re hitting an illegal, high-stakes poker game in Florida and it goes alright until, guess what - it doesn’t. One of her crew shoots a player dead and it’s time to get out of Dodge.
Turns out the victim is the son-in-law of a crime boss who’s possibly complicit in the demise of his daughter’s no-account husband, but then there are appearances to maintain. Can’t just go around letting family members get clipped without reprisals, so he puts newly released psycho hitman Eddie the Saint on the trail of Crissa and her crew.
For Crissa as for every professional criminal character in this type of story, the price for staying ahead of comeuppance is isolation and paranoia. Human interaction is limited and usually predicated on false pretense and success and survival require an icy remove from potential attachments. That’s why she doesn’t even know her own daughter. Her little girl has been raised by Crissa’s cousin and though there is a human impulse to protect and a genuine concern for her child’s well-being, it’s hard to call Crissa’s actions love.
And there’s the rub. Those she’s closest to and most invested in she must always remain aloof from. And it’s reciprocal. Her man on the inside wont even let her hold his hand during infrequent visits because he’s doing the same thing. To allow himself the vulnerability to love someone is to seal his fate. At some point she’s got to ask herself which is greater, the price of success or failure?
As must happen, her acquaintances begin meeting terrible ends as Eddie the Saint beats a vicious, bloody path toward the center of her concrete heart and she’s got to stop running and face him before he makes a victim out of her little girl.
Cold Shot to the Heart is a slick, fast-paced, straight-forward thriller with great characters (know them by their actions – or inaction) and a good sense of its place in the world of crime fiction, (descended from Richard Stark and related to the early crime books of Elmore Leonard, Garry Disher’s Wyatt books and Tom Piccirilli’s The Cold Spot and The Coldest Mile). Also check out Gone 'til November new in paperback.
What are your favorite 'professional' books?
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
