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Criss Cross

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Milo "Meat" Pitts is released from prison with a dream of hitting the big score. His wife, Strella, works at Fleets grocery store.

Although Milo hasn't had much to do with Strella in recent times, they are still legally married. His scheme is to get insider information about the security of the store and rob it.

Milo's planner is Doc Kasperson, a schemer, who has a current business of selling a hair restoration program. Also in the gang is Milo's former cellmate, Ducky, an unimaginative bumbler.

Mitchell Morse, a former Detroit cop, takes a job in the security department at Fleets. He has a relationship with Jean Satterfield, a young security guard with the armored car company.

With a group of characters who would make Elmore Leonard proud, Milo and his gang begin their plot.

Doc Kasperson is supposed to be putting the plan together but he seems inept. He tells Milo that he needs more information. Then, Strala tells them that she has met a new secutity officer, Mitch, and thinks she could get him to join the plot and give the info needed on the security system of the store.

One thing goes wrong after another as the story progresses with halarious results. The efforts of this group to come up with an intelligent plan and carry it out had me laughing out loud.

The characters were well developed. Mitch was a complicated character who changed pleasantly as the story progressed. The writing was clear and the dialogue was superbly done.

Upon getting released from prison, Milo "Meat" Pitts, indulged himself in a plan to rob an armored car at a department store. He was aptly named Meat because of his bulk and strength; but his only friend . . . or just sidekick, as he sometimes considered . . . was Ducky, who was comically the opposite in structure.
Mitchell Morse who had once been a good linebacker in college, but chose a career as a police officer, eventually lost that job due to his excessive force. Then as a security guard . . . which he eventually lost . . . ended up as a guard at a discount store, where he was to meet Starla who worked as a cashier.
Starla, whom was very loose with herself in an attempt to get out of a dreadful job, and dreadful city, encountered more grief when an ex-husband whom she had self-proclaimed being divorced from eight years ago came knocking at her trailer. She didn't like being around Meat, but his idea to get a lot of money held her interest. Though it would be a long two months before the robbery, having to put up with Meat and that goof Ducky in the meantime.
Doc Kasperson (a scammer of sorts . . . teetering legitimacy with his hair growth idea) was an acquaintance of Meat, and who was brought in to get the details of the job. Unfortunately throughout the novel there is a client who constantly is pestering the Doc, along with the story, but becomes relevant towards the end.
This novel contains an occasional interlude of dark humor that may or may not pertain to the story, but when it involves Meat and Ducky these humor parts make the story worth reading. It's well written, but overdone and could have been shortened by 40 pages.

It would have been good to have kept the book from seven years ago. Looking to get it again. Kakonis writes better than Elmore Leonard in some ways. He makes criminals even more realistic. Criss Cross had a strange duo that went well together, but a duo I've seen in real life...when a huge tough guy is partnered with a weakling. Another tough guy...who is a victim of occupational circumstance...ends up in a battle of wits and brawn with the criminals. A attractive woman is also good to have in the mix; and there is one.
........So, now that this has been re-read: The ex-cons were "Meat" and "Ducky," the huge and scrawny, respectively. Starla is the wife of Meat, whom she hadn't seen in eight years, and is forced into helping with robbing an armored truck at the department store she works at.
Starla looks for help in the plan (and for her own sake) by getting "Morse" included. And Morse, who has gone from college linebacker, to police officer, to security gaurd, to then hit bottom at the department store looking for thieves, goes along, but not for the sake of Starla or the money; he want's to break up the robbery.
There's Doc Kasperson involved, too; who mixes upgrading the plan of the robbery with scamming men over hair products. This charactor, and the man he is scamming, might be a bit of an annoyance, and interfering with the interesting and comical escapades of Meat and Ducky, who are without a doubt the main attraction.
This crime novel is well written, but to me, about a total of 20 pages here and there too long, maybe more. Ranking Tom Kakonis's novels: 1. Double Down / 2. Michigan Roll / 3. Shadow Counter / 4. Criss Cross