SHOOT THE WOMAN FIRST by Wallace Stroby

GRADE: B

*Book 3 of the Crissa Stone series*

Crissa Stone is back at it again. She's reunited with a couple of old colleagues (including Charlie Glass from the check cashing heist in Cold Shot to the Heart) and is getting ready to rob a car-full of cash just sitting out in the middle of a Detroit street. But, once again, everything gets all screwed-up, dumbasses make mistakes, people get shot, and Crissa ends up being hunted for the dough.

And yet again, Crissa lets her sense of morality and goodness get in the way. That's the thing that sets her character apart from her male literary counterpart, Parker, who she's constantly compared to. She actually has a heart, no matter how much she tries to conceal it. I guess that's a good thing, but if she didn't feel the need to do things like help a dead friend's family, things would go a lot easier for her. But, on the other hand, if she didn't do those things we wouldn't have these fun, action-packed books. Like the two previous books, this one is sleek and propulsive with very little filler. Another exciting chapter in a consistent series about one badass anti-heroine!

"When they're training these counterterror teams, they tell them when they're going into a situation where there's multiple targets––men and women– you shoot the women first."

"Why?"

"Because in a gang or a crew or whatever, a woman's got to be three times as tough, three times as committed, three times as hard-ass for the men to take her seriously."