Dope ThiefRay was in “juvie” before his sweetheart graduated high school, before she died in his stolen car. He thought he was born “in the life” and had no choices. His memories were like “reading a terrible book and not wanting to read more pages because you knew the story just got worse.” Dennis Tafoya gets his reader “in the head” of Ray, his primary low-life, so intensely that you can’t stop reading but you’re dreading its end. Dope Thief is a masterful work of modern crime fiction that softens searing brutality with glimpses of goodness and creates rich sensory description with a brief turn of phrase. The fact that Dope Thief is Tafoya’s first book is irrelevant to the reader except for the anticipation of what will follow.
--Christina Weaver, author and free-lance writer.
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