"The Devil's Share"

Wallace Stroby is the author of seven novels, including the recently released The Devil's Share, the fourth in his series about professional thief Crissa Stone. He lives in New Jersey.

Stroby applied the Page 69 Test to The Devil's Share and reported the following:

Page 69 of The Devil's Share is a little bit of a character digression almost unrelated to the plot, which I don’t generally do, but it seemed fitting here. Crissa Stone, the professional thief and career criminal from three of my previous novels, is staying in a motel in the Nevada desert, where she’s casing a lonely stretch of highway as a likely site to hijack a truck carrying priceless Iraqi artifacts. She’s thinking over the possibilities while waiting for Hicks, one of her team, to arrive, and in the meantime is having a meal alone in the motel’s attached restaurant. There she’s approached by an older man who wants to buy her a drink, which she politely refuses. He won’t take no for an answer and eventually tries to sit down next to her, uninvited.

“Well, allow me to introduce myself at least,” he said. “My name is –” He started to draw out a chair. She hooked a foot around one of its legs, stopped him.

“Drift,” she said.

He met her eyes, saw something there he wasn’t used to. He straightened, looked down at her, his smile gone. He gave a slight bow, turned away, said “Dyke” under his breath, and went back down the hallway and through the saloon doors. She watched him go, wondering if he was staying at the motel, if he might be a problem later.

Part of that exchange is an homage to classic 1940s femme fatale Audrey Totter and a scene from one of her best films, 1949’s Tension. Totter died in December 2013 at age 95, while I was writing the novel, so I wanted to include a little tribute to her, from one tough fictional dame to another. The clip wasn’t on YouTube, so I uploaded it myself. You can find it as “Audrey Totter in Tension (1949).”

Learn more about the author and his novels at the official Wallace Stroby website and The Heartbreak Blog.

The Page 69 Test: Gone 'til November.

The Page 69 Test: Cold Shot to the Heart.

The Page 69 Test: Kings of Midnight.

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--Marshal Zeringue