Shlomit Beck

Shlomit Beck (no personal information available) – [she is included in this Bibliography because of the enigmatic and intriguing descriptions of her recent Joe Gallo trilogy, as featured on Amazon, which offers the following details about her: “.. the author of the novel The Iron Wall, and has published widely under other names on politics, philosophy, film, and literature”. No details about The Iron Wall are available, either.]

Beck, Shlomit [Joe Gallo series #1], (Lapdance [pb, independently published, Oct. 27, 2025]) 979-8271839047 [a gritty, character-driven police procedural that introduces a brilliant and deeply flawed heroine. Officer Helen Barry is a USC master’s graduate and a self-described “badge bunny with a badge,” whose affair with a married superior gets her exiled to the Area Nuisance & Crime Task Force—the department’s doghouse. Her new beat isn’t the high-stakes police work she craves, but the soul-crushing boredom of noise complaints, sad drunks, and the grim discovery of a wealthy young woman left to die like a “bundle of rags” in a filthy alley.

Helen’s new partner is Sergeant Joe Gallo, a tenured professor of Criminal Justice who seems to relish the “boring” essence of policing. He’s a “fallen rabbi” with his own catastrophic failures, and he challenges Helen’s every instinct. As she is drawn into Gallo’s intellectual orbit, a dangerous new man enters her life: Dr. Harris Gable, a Harvard-trained combat veteran who sees Helen’s chaos not as a flaw, but as a high-risk asset to be acquired. Harris doesn’t offer Helen romance; he offers a merger. A chillingly logical life plan that is as seductive as it is terrifying. Caught between a partner who wants to save her soul and a suitor who wants to own it, Helen must decide which cage is safer. In a city of transaction and illusion, she’s about to learn that the most dangerous nuisance of all is a woman’s own desire, and the price of containing it is everything. - Amazon]

Beck, Shlomit [Joe Gallo series #2], (Conversion Therapy [pb, Iron Wall Books, published on Dec. 22, 2025] 979-8994190135 [Vincent Levy is a mess. A gay, meth-using Pomona dropout and Hollywood grip, he vibrates with the nervous energy of a life lived without guardrails. When he gets arrested, he expects the usual revolving door of the legal system. Instead, he gets his uncle.

Sergeant Joe Gallo is an anomaly: an Orthodox Jewish cop in Los Angeles who believes in rules, rituals, and the restorative power of boredom. He offers Vincent a plea deal that looks less like modern rehab and more like a boot camp for the soul. No drugs. No screens on Shabbat. No excuses.

As Vincent struggles with Gallo’s regime of curfews and bad Ashkenazi food, he finds himself working on a Christian film set, giving spiritual advice to evangelicals, and wondering if his uncle’s ancient methods might actually be saving his life. But if Vincent needs Gallo’s rules and connections to stay alive, Gallo discovers he needs some of Vincent’s Romanesco will to make life worth living.

Yet even Gallo has his own “wilderness” to tame. Clara Huber, the former mistress who once wrecked his marriage, re-enters his life with a crisis of her own. Her mother, a mad-scientist academic, has made her condo into a hazardous chemical lab, forcing Gallo to confront the chaotic past he has hoped to wall out. Gallo must prove that the discipline he forces on his nephew holds firm even when the fire gets close.

Conversion Therapy, the second Joe Gallo novel, is a sharp, procedurally grounded novel about the necessity -- and insufficiency -- of fences in a world that worships boundless autonomy. – Amazon]

Beck, Shlomit [Joe Gallo series #3], (The Land [pb, Iron Wall Books, March 3, 2026] 979-8994190159 [From the high-stakes real estate scams of Santa Ynez to the chaotic underground of Tel Aviv, the Gallo family is scattered and in danger. To bring his strays home, Sergeant Joe Gallo must rely on the one man he never truly understood: his father, Vincenzo. A retired physicist and Holocaust survivor, Vincenzo built a fortress in Pasadena to protect his secrets from shadows only he could see. Now, Vincenzo’s secrets might be the only thing that can save Joe’s daughter from the wilderness. - Amazon]