"Ray and his best friend, Manny, have a great scam going: with a couple of fake badges and some DEA windbreakers they found at a secondhand store, they pose as federal agents and rip off small-time drug dealers, taking their money and drugs and disappearing before anyone is the wiser. But it can't last forever..."--
This "raw and redemptive"* debut novel is the basis of a buzzy new TV show Dope Thief coming to Apple+ TV in March 2025 starring Brian Tyree Henry.
Ray and his best friend, Manny, close ever since they met in juvie almost twenty years ago, have a great scam going: With a couple of fake badges and some DEA windbreakers they found at a secondhand store, they pose as federal agents and rip off small-time drug dealers, taking their money and drugs and disappearing before anyone is the wiser. It's the perfect sting: the dealers they target are too small to look for revenge and too guilty to call the police, nobody has to die, nobody innocent gets hurt, and Ray and Manny score plenty.
But it can't last forever. Eventually, they choose the wrong mark and walk out with hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a heavy hitter, who is more than willing to kill to get his money back, is coming after them. Now Ray couldn't care less about the score. He wants out---out of the scam, out of a life he feels like he never chose. Whether the victim of his latest job---not to mention his partner---will let him is another question entirely.
Dennis Tafoya brings a rich, passionate, and accomplished new voice to the explosive story of a small-time crook with everything to lose in Dope Thief, his outstanding hardboiled debut.
"Raw and redemptive... A boy 'born into the life' makes a wrenching attempt to change course or die trying in a first novel that marks Tafoya as a writer to watch."-Publishers Weekly*
"An impressive debut by a writer savvy enough to understand that the way to a reader's heart is often as not through flawed characters."-Kirkus Reviews
"Dope Thief is an outstanding debut. Tafoya has gone beyond the noir formula to create a book where despair and hope are intertwined and the reader becomes as emotionally conflicted as the characters. I fully expect to see this on many nomination lists as best first novel. It deserves to win."-Reviewing the Evidence
"Tafoya is off to a promising start: Ray and a number of other characters are quirky and engaging. The locale of Bucks County, which ranges from city gritty to bucolic beauty, works well. The plotting is solid, and the action has a hard, violent edge that recalls Richard Price."-Booklist
"Dope Thief is a classic story, which explains a lot of its appeal... First-time novelist Dennis Tafoya has a nice sense of how and where his characters live, revealing in stark detail the hardscrabble life of the petty thief." -Chicago Tribune
"A finely nuanced character study of a criminal trying to get out of the downward spiral of his crimes... Dope Thief took me by surprise. Tafoya's prose alternates between a staccato, hard-boiled cadence and a beautiful, near florid style... Over Dope Thief's final 90 pages, Tafoya's coda elevates his book to the extraordinary." -Las Vegas Weekly
"Tafoya's book starts at a sprint and hits its marks." -Philadelphia City Paper
"Dope Thief is first-rate literary noir, the hardest core crime novel I've read this year. It manages to be funny without ever descending into the trivial, and at its core it's harrowing. An amazingly assured debut by Dennis Tafoya, a writer I know I'll be following for years to come." --Scott Phillips, author of Cottonwood
"Dope Thief is one of those first novels that scream for us to pay attention to an important new voice in crime fiction. Dennis Tafoya writes a fast, quirky, and thoroughly twisted tale of corruption, heroism, and redemption that will leave its mark on you." --Jonathan Maberry, multiple Bram Stoker Award--winning author of Patient Zero
Dennis Tafoya was born in Philadelphia and now lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He is the author of the novels Dope Thief and The Wolves of Fairmount Park, as well as numerous short stories.
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