As a shocked nation mourns the assassination of John F. Kennedy, two lost souls looking for a new chance at life find each other along the wide-open Western highways.
Lou Berney’s November Road is the latest novel to explore this explosive material, and the result is one of the most distinctive, unexpected crime novels of recent years ... November Road is his first attempt at historical fiction, and it is impressive ... a road novel and a first-rate thriller ... a quietly moving evocation of public and private trauma, of individuals searching for new lives in a radically altered world. This is Berney’s best book to date.
November Road...tells a propulsive, romantic and danger-laden story centered on two people taking to the open road, running from past mistakes ... a crime novel with a rare combination of emotional weight and gunshot speed ... Berney gets inside his characters so gradually and gracefully that November Road easily transcends genre conventions. All that, and he keep things moving at a lively clip ... November Road is indeed something different. There's no shortage of JFK fiction, but this one belongs up there with the best.
Frank Guidry learns the hard way that when it comes to the criminal underworld, everyone is expendable. After years of serving Carlos Marcello, a prominent New Orleans crime lord, Frank’s usefulness has finally run its course ... After dumping a car that was supposed to play a role in the shooting in Dallas, Frank discovers that Paul Barone, a skilled hitman with a devastatingly lethal resumé, has been tasked with killing him before anyone uncovers the link between the assassination and Marcello. Forced to go on the run, Frank’s only chance at survival is to get all the way to Las Vegas and link up with one of Carlos Marcello’s rivals, who not only hates the New Orleans mob man enough to help Frank disappear, but has the resources to make sure nobody ever finds him ... Incredibly well-written and deftly plotted, Lou Berney’s November Road is one of the year’s best novels. . . and a story readers will be talking about for a very long time.
