This is a raw, hard-edged, noirish novel, dark and violent. It’s good, too, with a plot easy enough to follow without too much back-paging and a heroine who listens to Bach between gun battles and turns out to be surprisingly likable. Crissa Stone is a robber for hire, now employed by a mobster who wants her and two cronies to break into a Fort Lauderdale hotel and bust up a card game that has a million bucks on the table. The three miscreants decide to rappel down the side of the building. The scenes of preparation and execution are chilling. But the heist goes wrong. A man is killed because, we’re told, one of the gunmen spooked. But maybe not. Could the caper be disguised murder for hire? Why else does Crissa suddenly find herself pursued by a reptile called Eddie the Saint? Their clashes are cinematic: hurtling cars and bloodstained snow. Stroby has been called a nascent Crumley or Pelecanos. He shares their sense that cynicism is the last pose left to a romantic.

This is a raw, hard-edged, noirish novel, dark and violent. It’s good, too, with a plot easy enough to follow without too much back-paging and a heroine who listens to Bach between gun battles and turns out to be surprisingly likable. Crissa Stone is a robber for hire, now employed by a mobster who wants her and two cronies to break into a Fort Lauderdale hotel and bust up a card game that has a million bucks on the table. The three miscreants decide to rappel down the side of the building. The scenes of preparation and execution are chilling. But the heist goes wrong. A man is killed because, we’re told, one of the gunmen spooked. But maybe not. Could the caper be disguised murder for hire? Why else does Crissa suddenly find herself pursued by a reptile called Eddie the Saint? Their clashes are cinematic: hurtling cars and bloodstained snow. Stroby has been called a nascent Crumley or Pelecanos. He shares their sense that cynicism is the last pose left to a romantic.