Crissa Stone is a career criminal who has pulled a number of impressive heists by knowing how to keep her mouth shut and her temper in check. Still, as good as she is, she wants to get out of the life. All she needs is one last big score, enough to bribe her lover s way out on parole, set up a safe and stable new life, and get her daughter back. But things keep going wrong, like when her last two partners lost their cool and fought over the take instead of walking away $150,000 richer. The mess they made of the job and each other has put her on the run again.

She s not the only one. Benny Roth, a former mobster, has been straight for years, but now he has his own problems. A face from the past has popped up to tell him that boss Joey Dio is finally dead and to ask about the $5 million that Joey was rumored to have stashed away years ago. Benny denies knowing anything about it and claims he s out of the business. That may be what he says, but he s willing to risk almost everything for one last shot.

With the law and mobsters on the lookout and $5 million on the line, it isn t long before Crissa and Benny find themselves on a collision course that neither of them can avoid. This hard-boiled world, where the stakes and the risks are always high, unfolds at breakneck speed in "Kings of Midnight," another dark and thrilling masterwork of crime fiction from Wallace Stroby.

Book four in The Hunted series

FBI agent Tyler Reed trusts only facts and evidence, until the day a beautiful blonde delivers a life-saving warning based on nothing more than a vision.

Five years later, the mysterious Morgan Standish has used her talents to help Tyler and the FBI bring down countless criminals. Still, Tyler knows next to nothing about her. She contacts him by phone and by some sort of psychic connection he s not prepared to admit exists but has not shown herself once. Until now.

Morgan s gift may let her see things others can t, but it comes at a price. Getting too close to anyone is dangerous, especially the gorgeous, moody Special Agent Reed. For she s seen the future: If they meet again too soon, an innocent could be lost.

But when Tyler s latest case forces Morgan out of hiding, she is the one thrust into the path of a serial killer, the Psychic Slayer, who will stop at nothing to protect the secrets only Morgan can see.

Half a million dollars in drug proceeds, guarded by three men with automatic weapons for professional thief Crissa Stone and her team, stealing it was the easy part. But when the split goes awry in a blaze of gunfire, Crissa finds herself on the run with a duffel bag full of stolen cash, bound by a promise to deliver part of the take to the needy family of one of her slain partners.

In pursuit are the drug kingpin s lethal lieutenants and a former Detroit cop with his own deadly agenda. They think the money s there for the taking, for whoever finds her first. But Crissa doesn t plan to give it up without a fight, even as her mission of mercy puts her and a young child in mortal danger, with forces on both sides of the law closing in. After all, a debt is a debt even if it has to be paid in blood.

With "Shoot the Woman First," Wallace Stroby delivers another powerful, lyrical novel, his third featuring one of the most original female characters in hard-boiled fiction.