“Wallace Stroby writes descriptive prose as shiny and sharp as a surgical instrument.” —Chicago Tribune

“Original and exciting...Stroby's dazzling debut manages to wake us up like the slap of a wave on the New Jersey shore.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Stroby does wonders with his blue-collar characters.” —New York Times Book Review

“A scorching first novel that mixes the melancholic heart of tough-guy fiction with a fierce and violent gangster plot.” —Washington Post

“Every so often a debut novel comes along that is so arresting and powerful you just know the author will go on to a fine career. Such is The Barbed-Wire Kiss.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer

“A fast-paced debut...prepare to have your V.Q. (violence-quotient) challenged to the max.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The Barbed-Wire Kiss is as gritty and tough as its Soprano-land New Jersey setting, and Wallace Stroby is a no-nonsense guide and a fine writer.” —C. J. Box, author of Savage Run

“A new member has been added to the Michael Connelly-Robert Crais-Harlan Coben club of crime fiction. This work marks the debut of a novelist of great promise.” —Gerald Petievich, author of To Live and Die in L.A.

“Drawing on his career as a journalist living on the Jersey Shore, Stroby has written a novel that is part Sopranos, part Springstein, but in all a unique and stunning debut.” —Bartholomew Gill, author of The Death of an Irish Sinner

“The Barbed-Wire Kiss is one of those books that gut-hooks on the first page and never lets you go.” —John Gilstrap, author of Scott Free and Nathan's Run

“Intense and gritty, The Barbed-Wire Kiss weaves a melancholy path through the decaying skeletons of the Jersey shore's dead resort towns, a dark, brooding landscape strobed by lightning strikes of passion and mayhem. If James Lee Burke had grown up in Asbury Park, he might have written The Barbed-Wire Kiss.” —F. Paul Wilson, creator of Repairman Jack