“When people say they want to read a really good novel, the kind you just can’t put down, this is the kind of book they mean. Exceptional.” —STEPHEN KING“Berney’s emotional, empathetic writing keeps . . . the pages turning.” —ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, “Required Reading”NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY Entertainment Weekly • Washington Post • AARP • Newsweek • Dallas Morning News • South Florida … Entertainment Weekly • Washington Post • AARP • Newsweek • Dallas Morning News • South Florida Sun-Sentinel • Chicago Public Library • Real Book Spy • CrimeReads • Litreactor • Library Journal • LitHub • Booklist
Winner of the Barry, Macavity, and Anthony Awards, the Hammett Prize, the Left Coast Crime “Lefty” Award for Best Mystery Novel, the Oklahoma Book Award for Best Fiction Novel, and the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award for Best Thriller Novel!
Set against the assassination of JFK, a poignant and evocative crime novel that centers on a desperate cat-and-mouse chase across 1960s America—a story of unexpected connections, daring possibilities, and the hope of second chances from the Edgar Award-winning author of The Long and Faraway Gone.
Frank Guidry’s luck has finally run out.
A loyal street lieutenant to New Orleans’ mob boss Carlos Marcello, Guidry has learned that everybody is expendable. But now it’s his turn—he knows too much about the crime of the century: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Within hours of JFK’s murder, everyone with ties to Marcello is turning up dead, and Guidry suspects he’s next: he was in Dallas on an errand for the boss less than two weeks before the president was shot. With few good options, Guidry hits the road to Las Vegas, to see an old associate—a dangerous man who hates Marcello enough to help Guidry vanish.
Guidry knows that the first rule of running is “don’t stop,” but when he sees a beautiful housewife on the side of the road with a broken-down car, two little daughters and a dog in the back seat, he sees the perfect disguise to cover his tracks from the hit men on his tail. Posing as an insurance man, Guidry offers to help Charlotte reach her destination, California. If she accompanies him to Vegas, he can help her get a new car.
For her, it’s more than a car— it’s an escape. She’s on the run too, from a stifling existence in small-town Oklahoma and a kindly husband who’s a hopeless drunk.
It’s an American story: two strangers meet to share the open road west, a dream, a hope—and find each other on the way.
Charlotte sees that he’s strong and kind; Guidry discovers that she’s smart and funny. He learns that’s she determined to give herself and her kids a new life; she can’t know that he’s desperate to leave his old one behind.
Another rule—fugitives shouldn’t fall in love, especially with each other. A road isn’t just a road, it’s a trail, and Guidry’s ruthless and relentless hunters are closing in on him. But now Guidry doesn’t want to just survive, he wants to really live, maybe for the first time.
Everyone’s expendable, or they should be, but now Guidry just can’t throw away the woman he’s come to love.
And it might get them both killed.
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This book has two narrative arcs that intersect. It is told in the third person and focalized mostly through two characters–Frank, a relatively highly placed member of the New Orleans mob, who is on the run because he knows too much about the recent assassination of JFK; and Charlotte, the mother of two girls, who is fleeing her drunken husband and her stifling life in Oklahoma. A wrenching, suspenseful story that portrays both a relentless, frighteningly omniscient mobster world and one man’s attempt to carve out a small, personal atonement. This book won the award for best mystery at Bouchercon 2019.
“It’s a crime story, a love story, a deeply American story.” So reads the ad in the New York Times Review of Books, and they’re right: it’s an exceptional novel. The blending of history, real figures, and fictional characters is so well done! This is truly easy to mess up, and the author handles it deftly. Those involved in the Kennedy assassination were real, as was Carlos Marcello. Adding actor Ray Bolger was a treat! November Road offers danger and suspense enough to keep you reading late into the night.
I love reading historical fiction and November Road is a wonderful addition to my favorites list. JFK has been shot. Even now no one really knows what happen in Texas on a horrible day in 1963. While this is not a book about JFK it centers around people who know too much about what happen to him and who was involved. Guidry is on the run from the person who wants to rid the world of everyone who knows something about what did happen concerning the assassination of JFK.
The other story is Charlotte’s. She has taken her two adorable little girls and left her drunk husband to find a better life for herself and her daughters. Between Oklahoma and California, she manages to cross paths with Guidry and the two combined efforts to get to where they need to be.
The storylines come together, there are second chances for both Guidry and Charlotte, and I enjoyed the historical aspects that were thrown in throughout the story.
Holy Mackerel what a book! A literary suspense novel. Page-turner with achingly real characters.
Normally I don’t read crime thrillers, but I saw this in my and decided to give it a go. Pleasantly surprised how engrossing it was. Very enjoyable, and atmospheric.
November Road is a new look at the Kennedy assassination, a what-if that resonates, especially if you’re old enough to remember the event. Even if you’re not. Lou Berney creates believably flawed and likeable characters that stumble and overcome complicated and wistful lives.
Brilliant many-faceted thriller
I met Lou Berney at my very first Bouchercon mystery conference in Albany, where we were on opposing sides of a fierce debate about another new friend and a seedy tattoo parlor (is there another kind?). Years later, my children and I attended a Minor League ballgame in OKC with Lou and his wife; he and I also both had the once-in-a-lifetime experience of hurling ceremonial first pitches at Yankee Stadium, and both will be happy to recount the experience to you in nauseatingly self-indulgent detail.
But even had we never crossed all these paths, Lou’s latest would still be my favorite book of the past month. NOVEMBER ROAD is the sort of novel that defies expectations of what genre fiction is, blurring the lines among commercial, literary, and genre, with each type’s elements in perfect balance–exactly the sort of book I love to read. (Not coincidentally, also the sort I want to write.) I think it’s very rare for a book to be both beautiful and exciting, but this one is.
I’ve read all of Lou Berney’s novels and would read anything he writes. This book represents another step up after the superb, The Long and Faraway Gone. Believe all the acclaim. This guy is a major voice.
Interesting characters, even the villains, and well-written. You will continue to think about this book long after you read the last page.
November Road sets the stage for a journey that begins in the shadow of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and takes the reader along a path of love, heart ache, and belief that everything will turn out alright when faced with difficulties. Lou Berney does a remarkable job of pulling the reader into a time period and situation that was challenging without losing the true story of hope.
When’s the last time you read a hard-boiled crime novel set against the greatest crime of the twentieth century that actually has a lot of charm and heart to it? One of the best novels I’ve read in a long time. I’m definitely a Berney convert!
Great read for people who were living in the 60’s and understood the political climate!
Two unlikely friends road trip across the American southwest in 1963 with a killer on their trail. Great historical fiction set in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination! Highly recommend!
With every decision we create a new future, Leo said. “We destroy all other futures.”
An important statement and one that will stay routed within the pages of this thrilling, cat and mouse chase within an organization known as, The Mob.
It’s a heart-pounding, deeply atmospheric read that will hook you from the start. It’s riveting, raw and sharp in its delivery.
Berney has created a face-paced, spine-chiller of a story based in and around The Kennedy Assassination in 1963 with sprinkles of life in and around New Orleans, Las Vegas and yes, Texas.
It is masterfully written and one that will stay with you long after you’ve finished due to Lou Berney’s ability in writing strong, meaningful characters that leave an imprint on your soul.
My only agitation, the ending. I felt it a bit deflated as certain things were not quite tied-up as loose ends dangled. It didn’t seem to have the finality it deserved in matching with the intensity of the story.
Put that aside, all in all, a deeply compelling storyline and one I’m happy to have read.
I thank Lou Berney and William Morrow/Harper Collins Publishing for a fabulous ride alongside these characters. One I won’t soon forget.
Thank you Goodreads for this copy-ARC, in order that I may read my first novel by this author and leave an honest review.
Novels N Latte (Book Blog) and
Novels & Latte Book Club – FB
I do not know how I was able to receive and read this ebook. Once started, I could not stop. The book quickly focused on the angst of a person who habitually betrays people within the narrow confines of his very selective society. With the Kennedy Assassination, the protagonist has his survival structure turned upside down and flees for his life unwittingly involving innocents in his race to save his life. How he handles this problem not even remotely resembling anything in his life becomes the crux of the novel. I am perfectly willing to say this might be the book of the year in either 2018 or 2019. This is one of the finest books that I have read in many years.
Outstanding!