Deep in the world of professional crooks

first set
The setting sun bathed the sea in the fire.

The book
And preferably, it robs drug dealers, illegal gambling, banks and the like. People in need, it would decrease Crissa Stone, however, no money. That would be going against their morals. The professional criminal is the fourth and apparently last Time the heroine of a novel by the American author Wallace Stroby.

In "The devil wants more", a Crissa on a Auftragsjob. It is lucrative, and the risks seem to be manageable. A wealthy art collector has to looted art treasures in Iraq. Of all things, as he has a buyer on the hook. So Crissa to RAID with a Team from the return transport of the historic pieces from the warehouse of the art collector of the port in southern California. The collector had shown his good will, and could rake in the sales price, as well as the insurance sum. Crissa, the cool planner, organized, a part of the team, the other part of the collector. Your Plan looks good. You wanted to turn the thing without violence, but that does not work. And Crissa wants to pick up the second part of the fee for themselves and their Team, they experienced a nasty Surprise. The matter escalated brutally.

Wallace Stroby is driving the story, which remains entirely in the circles of the crooks, rapidly, without you to stop by digressions, long interior monologues, and General considerations. He describes what is happening. And there are precise, brief dialogues, the result never in chat. I haven't counted, but certainly more than the half of the book is disputed by direct speech. This results in an almost cinematic, in a very reduced style, as the old masters such as Elmore Leonard or Donald Westlake used. In the case of the figure of the robber with its own morality Parker, the criminal anti-hero of two dozen novels that he published between 1962 and 2008, under the Pseudonym of Richard Stark (and are still absolutely worth reading) is likely anyway to have a Protagonist of Westlake was the godfather:. Like Westlake, Parker and his Motivation never explain, tells us Stroby Crissas world and not Think in terms of explanatory words. Although it is almost only defined by your Actions and the dialogs, is very close to the protagonist to the reader.

Some may find this type of crime literature a little old-fashioned. I see it as a classic. With good old virtues that would befit many a garrulous writer well: descriptions are limited to what you need to know, crisp dialogue, dry humour, laconic style. And a tension that holds without the antics of over 300 pages.

rating

author
Wallace Stroby, born in 1960, in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and studied journalism at Rutgers University. He was a police reporter for the newspaper "the Asbury Park Press", and for 13 years Editor and book and film critic for "The Star-Ledger", the largest newspaper in the U.S. state of New Jersey, the he 2008. He was awarded for his journalistic Work with several prices. His first novel, "The Barbed-Wire Kiss", released in 2003. So far from it, eight novels published. Only the four novels by the professional robber Crissa Stone have so far been published in German. Wallace Stroby lives in New Jersey.

Wallace Stroby: "The devil wants more" (Original: "The Devil's Share", St. Martin' Press, New York, 2015). From the English version of Alf Mayer. Pendragon Verlag, Bielefeld, 2019. 314 p., about 23 Fr.

(editing Tamedia)

Created: 13.03.2019, 09:13 PM