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Gone 'til November

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Wallace Stroby's third novel "Gone'Til Novemeber" sets the lives of a small-town Florida sheriff and a New Jersey enforcer on an action-packed collision course. The shooting of a young black man after a traffic stop on a deserted road leaves Sheriff Sara Cross and gunman Morgan looking for answers. Cross' choice to back up a fellow officer's account of the shooting puts her in the path of Morgan, who is sent to find the drug dealer's money that disappeared from the young man's car.

You can see the two characters' choices and mistakes hurtling them toward a life-threatening encounter. The tension from waiting for that moment makes you want to finish the book even faster. The story is violent and beautiful. Stroby's writing is spare, exciting and poetic. The ending is bittersweet and perfect.

A late night shoot out on a country road in Florida is the beginning of a harrowing case for Sheriff Sara Cross. Unfortunately, Cross is second on the scene, her ex-boyfriend, Billy Flynn, having shot a stranger who tried to flee, leaving behind a trunk full of guns and ammunition. For all appearances, it is a righteous shooting- except for the nagging doubts of those back at the station and even Sara, who wants to trust Billy but has her own suspicions. Sara is in a tough place, harboring some small affection for Billy after all, but preoccupied with the health of her young son, Danny, who has been gravely ill. With her career on the rise, Sara can't afford complications or emotional traps at this stage of her life.

In New Jersey, a drug-running criminal has hit a couple of obstacles, stiff competition with other dealers, the bad reputation of his product and the potential for a killer deal with some Jamaicans delivering pure product. Mikey-Mike sends his top enforcer, Morgan, to Florida to find out what happened to the driver shot by the cop, the guns and the money that was stashed in the trunk of the car. True to form, Mikey isn't content to trust Morgan, sending twin thugs as a backup in case Morgan can't handle his business. Morgan has his own problems and lots of reasons to get that money back- even if only for himself. Predictably, all the characters come together, each with an agenda, Sara caught in the middle, her belief in Billy clouding her judgment at a critical time. It all ends one violent night, bullets flying, Billy, the Jamaicans, Mikey's muscle and Sara.

Stroby writes with an edgy energy, contrasting the violent world of career criminals with a small town sheriff's office, New Jersey thugs infiltrating the quiet Florida countryside, careless of the collateral damage they inflict on the innocent. A good cop with an instinct for the job and a deep love for her son, Sara is one of those unfortunate women who have trouble believing the worst of an old boyfriend, hoping against all evidence to the contrary, that things will turn out all right or she can help Billy survive his indiscretions. The final bloodbath is not unexpected, drugs, money, greed and guns a powerful combination, Sara learning about misplaced trust and the cost of loyalty. Stroby pulls no punches, his characters as real as the brutality that attends the drug culture at odds with law enforcement. Luan Gaines/2010.

Sara Cross is a single mother whose adorable six-year-old son, Danny, is battling leukemia. She's also one of the finest deputies in Hopedale, Florida, a small redneck, Confederate-flag-flying community. She arrives on the scene of a shooting where fellow deputy and ex-boyfriend, Billy Flynn, has shot to death a young black man, Derek Willis. Billy claims self defense; however, Sara's investigation forces her to believe otherwise. For example, who stole the 350 gees that were hidden in the trunk of Derek's car?

Nathaniel Morgan is a ruthless, over-the-hill contract killer for gangsta drug lord Mikey-Mike of Newark, New Jersey. Mikey-Mike sends him on a road trip to Hopedale to find his 350 gees. Morgan plans on keeping all the money; he'll kill anyone who tries to stop him, and that includes Haitian thugs, redneck deputies and Mikey-Mike's own henchmen. A bloodbath ensues. Morgan has rare intestinal cancer and needs the money for medical treatment. Dr. Kinzler insists he begin immediate treatment. But Morgan has to take a trip first; he'll be gone `til November.

"Gone `Til November" is the latest mystery from Wallace Stroby. It is not your classic whodunnit. In fact, the reader will probably guess early on who killed Derek Willis and why. Instead, "Gone `Til November" is a violent, action-packed crime drama that is highly emotional. As I read this novel, I thought, "This man [Wallace Stroby] is a damn good writer. I'll never write as good as him." The novel's characterization is what impressed me. Stroby's characters are very three-dimensional and lifelike.

The novel's central character or protagonist is obviously the affable, hard working Sara Cross. She is very trusting, too trusting. She sometimes lets her heart override her judgment. I knew right away that her ex-boyfriend, Billy Flynn, was slime. Why couldn't she see that for herself? But it was Sara's struggles with Danny's illness that drew me to really like her. She truly loves her son.

Sara is surrounded by two evil antagonists. The first is obviously the racist Billy who couldn't be faithful to Sara. The other is Nathaniel Morgan; his character is the novel's most complex and, perhaps, intriguing. On one hand, he is ruthless. On the other, he has a soft heart for women in trouble, especially women with ill children. A part of me despised Morgan, but a part of me also admired him. All of his victims were lawless thugs and one might rationalize they deserved to die. Morgan becomes almost an antihero. I kept hoping he'd find the money in order to save himself.

Yes, Wallace Stroby has a gift for good character development. He also has a gift for creating unique settings such as the beautiful, peaceful Florida everglades which serves as a contrasting environment to that of the gritty slums and ghettoes of Newark, New Jersey. There are other contrasts and conflicts in this novel: they occur between races, between male and female deputies, and between good and bad deputies.

"Gone `Til November" is a fast-paced thrill ride that is guaranteed to please fans of shoot-`em-up crime drama. Wallace Stroby has a penchant for creating mysteries centered around the seedier elements of New Jersey. He has written two other character driven novels: "The Barbed-Wire Kiss" and its sequel, "The Heartbreak Lounge." Both feature former state trooper Harry Rane who gets involved with gangsters in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Hopefully, there will be a sequel to "Gone `Til November" that will feature Sara Cross who, like Harry Rane, refuses to back down and give up.


Joseph B. Hoyos

Two of my all-time favorite novels are THE BARBED-WIRE KISS and THE HEARTBREAK LOUNGE. Both are written by Wallace Stroby, and both are crime novels as dark and gritty a walk on the wild side that you can get without dirtying your shoes. Stroby has been absent from the literary scene for a while but returns with GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER, a somewhat different work from his previous titles, but one that demonstrates that he has not lost one iota of the magic that made his first two books instant classics.

While THE BARBED-WIRE KISS and THE HEARTBREAK LOUNGE were set in North Central New Jersey, GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER utilizes a bit of a change of scenery and makes readers who are familiar with Stroby's prior works sit up and take notice. The new book opens in central Florida where a nighttime traffic stop on a deserted rural highway goes horribly wrong for Derrick Willis, a motorist from New Jersey with a cache of guns in his trunk. Deputy Sheriff Sara Cross responds to a call only to find that Billy Flynn, her former partner and lover, has shot Willis at the scene. The shooting appears to be justifiable given the gun in Willis's hand, and the matter is considered closed even as the officers investigating the case have some lingering doubts.

But Willis's death sets wheels in motion, not only among some heavy-hitting Haitian criminals in South Florida but also for a Newark drug dealer who is suddenly out a fortune in money --- which seems to have disappeared from Willis's car --- that he needs for his ever-increasing legal defenses. An enforcer named Morgan is dispatched to Florida to recover the money by any means necessary. Morgan, as we learn very quickly in the alternate opening chapters of GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER, is a product of the rough streets of Newark, who is capable of sudden and extreme violence and yet adheres to a rough moral code.

Morgan needs the money as well, and the double-cross that he believes his employer is about to pull on him dovetails with the one he is about to spring on both his employer and the Haitian gang. In the meantime, Cross is slowly moving into the middle of what is about to become a hellacious crossfire as she begins to realize that the man with whom she was once involved --- and still loves --- is in over his head as he becomes entrenched in what's going on. Violent dramas are played out as North Jersey comes to Central Florida, and several parties learn that violence, greed and death are the same no matter where you are.

Stroby truly gets it right. If you were a fan of "The Wire" and impressed with how accurately Baltimore was portrayed on that series, you will be doubly impressed with GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER, wherein Stroby, armed with words, captures the essence of the streets of Newark, come to call on the back roads of Florida. If you love noir crime fiction or good, solid literature in general and don't read this book, then you haven't kissed the prettiest girl on the block.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

St. Charles County (Florida) sheriff's deputy Sara Cross gets a 2 AM radio call summoning her to help Billy Flynn, another deputy and Sara's former lover. She finds a shaken Billy who has just killed a young (22) black man after what seemed to be a routine traffic stop. The driver ran when Billy had him open the car's trunk, then wheeled with a gun in his hand. Billy fired. Nothing that Sara observes contradicts this story. The small arsenal of weapons in the car and the revolver lying near the dead driver's hand seem to support it. It's ruled a justified shooting, even though the sheriff thought a couple of details were unusual.

But the dead kid has no record, was just a year from college graduation and, according to his wife, knew nothing about guns. The wife thinks it was murder and the cops (including Sara) are covering up. Troubled, Sara digs a little deeper and soon has doubts herself.

The reader quickly learns that the kid had $350,000 to buy drugs for a New Jersey dealer. No cash was recovered at the scene. The dealer dispatches a veteran enforcer, Morgan, to Florida to retrieve the cash and do whatever necessary to clean up loose ends. Morgan decides to go after the money for himself, and things get very rough.

The characters are believable and the story exciting. The demands of the characters' personal lives and feelings are mixed in smoothly. One problem: Sara is portrayed as a very smart and careful cop but nonetheless does some dumb things that increase her personal danger dramatically. This struck me as unbelievable and a failure of the author's imagination and plotting skills. Overall, however, the book is entertaining and enjoyable.

A powerful and beautifully written story about three people whose lives converge in unexpected ways after one of them, a police officer, shoots and kills a suspect one night while on duty. A dark, nuanced tale that will stay with you long after you finish the last page. This book should have a broad appeal to both general fiction and mystery readers alike.

Wallace Stroby has written another excellent crime noir novel - Gone `Til November. This time, however, Stroby has gotten away from his favorite rogue gumshoe Harry Ranes. GTN brings us a heroine this time, Sara Cross, a more straight-laced yet still foible-ridden protagonist. Cross does have a healthy dose of Harry's loveable penchants for ignoring the rules whenever her heart tells her to, though doing so in a much more life-affirming way than the hell with the consequence Ranes.

Once again, Stroby brings the worlds of his heroine and villain together in a parallel narrative whereby the reader slowly starts to see how they are going to collide. As always with Stroby there is plenty of nasty action, and he is back in his favorite milieu is of nastiness: the unberbelly of the mean streets of New Jersey. However, this time Florida (sleepy, small town, old fashioned swampland version) goes from being the scene stealing cameo setting of the mouth-agaping opening chapter of Heartbreak Lounge, to being the main locale for his heroine and, of course, for all the usual fireworks of Stroby's signature denouement.

As another twist to his usual themes of strong violence (although taken down a notch from the mind-numbing violence of Heartbreak Lounge) and people who can't seem to get their act together, Stroby brings us Morgan, a somewhat winsome bad guy with bad health and bad healthcare. Stroby juxtaposes his "good guy" Cross, who has never shot a bad guy, with his "bad guy" Morgan who has all the qualms of killing his rival bad guys as a cop has of whether to hit the right turn signal when he sees a Dunkin Donuts.

However, the knowing and cunning crime spree of the aging life-long felon Morgan is undercut by his rapidly deteriorating health. Does he have it in him to rip off murderous drug and gun runners who are less than half his age, for that last huge score with Jersey low-life thugs, Haitian drug lords and the police each having him on their radar and taking no prisoners?

Sara Cross does her policework against the backdrop of all the trappings of the modern woman. She has a six year old whose health problems are similar in gravity as the villain's, whose father abandoned them long ago with little hope of return. She has the twists and turns of drama with her ex-boyfriend, fellow police officer Billy Flynn, who she can't quite seem to get herself untangled with and who, this time, gets her into trouble that neither he nor Sara herself can save her from.

Throw a dash of romance and race issues in and you have another excellent and highly entertaining can't-put-the-book-down type read from Stroby. Gone `Til November is a smart and smooth transition from Stroby's first two novels and it is highly recommended.

In St. Charles County, Florida Deputy Sheriff Sara Cross is the first to arrive at the deserted highway where her former lover and current law enforcement partner Deputy Sheriff Billy Flynn killed a twenty-two years old black man from New Jersey. Flynn says he stopped the victim for running a stop sign. However, the badly shaken cop says the man pulled out a gun and refused to put it down so he shot him. The single mother of a child stricken with leukemia, Sara believes him not because she still wants Billy, which she does; but because the dead man had a gun in his hand and a trunk loaded with weapons.

Drug dealer Mikey-Mike sends his aging torpedo Morgan to learn why his deal in Florida has not been commenced. Suffering from cancer, Morgan sees this as an opportunity for an easy final payday before he retires. Sara investigates the apparently justified homicide while Morgan makes his own scrutiny of the situation. Soon their separate inquiries will crash.

The key to this fast-paced police procedural thriller is real people make real choices; often real bad ones. Sara and Morgan are super leads holding their respective subplot together until they converge into a terrific story line. The support cast in Jersey and Florida enhance the powerful tale as Wallace Stroby makes a profound case that being human means frequently making poor decisions even at times knowing the consequential outcome, but unwisely doing so anyway.

Harriet Klausner

I hate to drag down the star average...but I try to save five stars for actual great literature. That said, this book is right up there with the best of the best of the genre: Connelly, Crais, Larsson, Sanford, Child. Fast moving, great bad guys....believable and well crafted good guys.

When they say in the press "a page-turner" it actually is. Read it in an afternoon I should have been working in the garden or on taxes....and I am not sorry.

Sara Cross has problems. She is a single mother and her six-year-old son is battling Leukemia. She is one of the best deputies her small Florida town has ever seen. Sara is the first responder to the scene when a shooting occurs and when she shows up, her ex--a fellow deputy--has shot a young, black man and his story is self defense and it seems that the evidence supports his story. Initially, Sara believes Billy's story, but the more she investigates the more questions she has.
Mikey-Mike is a New Jersey drug dealer who is having issues. His product is getting a name for being weak. He doesn't trust his hired man, Morgan and his money has come up missing. He sends Morgan to Florida to find the missing money and what happened to the carrier. True to form, not only does Mikey send Morgan, but also a couple of thugs to make sure the job gets done.
Morgan has his own agenda and problems he has to deal with. The other thugs definitely don't blend in to the quiet Florida community well and Sara is caught right in the middle of it all.
Fast-paced and exciting, this book will keep you entertained the whole way through. Characters so life-like, you will feel intense emotions toward each one of them!

Reviewed by Ashley Wintters for Suspense Magazine