“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 is a beautifully written story with characters that linger with you long after you’ve closed the book.
From its first frenetic pages to its wrenching final ones, Lou Berney takes us on the ride of a lifetime… It’s a crime story, a love story, a deeply American story. With November Road, Berney proves beyond doubt that he’s one of the most talented crime novelists working today.
November Road is an absolute gem of a crime novel. Utterly immersive and pitch perfect in every way.
Nothing less than an instant American classic. Haunting, thrilling — and indelible as a scar.
November Road is a remarkable and unforgettable reading experience… You will recommend it to friends. You will read it again. Berney is a writer to be read and admired. This is a staggeringly brilliant book and a flat-out terrific read.
Lou Berney has quickly become one of crime fiction’s stand-outs, a quietly subversive writer who can surprise the most jaded readers. November Road delivers everything we have come to expect from him — and then some.
Certainly one of the finest novels of the year, if not the decade. November Road is the perfect marriage of entertainment, history, and commentary on the human condition. Peopled with fascinating, yet all-to-human characters, settings that rise up and become vivid characters in themselves, and a riveting storyline that propels you to read just one more page, this is a novel that should remain at the tops of literary lists for years to come. I loved it!
Much-decorated suspense novelist Lou Berney isn’t resting on his laurels. His new novel, November Road, shows him at the top of his game. It crackles with the fire–and ice–of Dante’s Inferno.
Frank Guidry, a canny, veteran operative for New Orleans mob kingpin Carlos Marcello, has been tasked with disposing of a car linked to the assassination of President Kennedy. When he has done his duty, he learns that his years of loyalty to the clan won’t protect him. He flees New Orleans and races west on I-40, dogged by a Marcello lieutenant, Barone, intent on finding and killing him.
Charlotte Roy, from Logan County, Oklahoma, is also headed west on the same highway, fleeing her alcoholic husband Dooley with her two girls, Joan and Rosemary.
The refugees, seeking very different sources of help farther west, collide in a cheap motel in New Mexico. Then their motives and plans shift tectonically.
The chase plays out like a house afire. Will Barone track down Charlotte and Frank? Will Frank find an ally in an old Las Vegas enemy of Marcello? Can Charlotte save her children from the mob?
Lou Berney didn’t win an Edgar and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for nothing. He plots deftly, inhabits the minds of characters from all walks of life. Like Elmore Leonard—and Horace McCoy before him—he stokes empathy for nasty players and innocents alike.
A master of his craft, Berney holds his cards close. And he never breaches the terms he has set—for his characters or his plot. November Road will not let you rest before its final page.
What a great read, flush with whip-snap dialogue, a brilliant premise, and legit mayhem. Loved it indeed.
This is one of the best novels I have read in a long time. Lou Berney writes like a dream – full of suspense and tension, but also full of emotion, so subtly conveyed, and the ending will floor you. It’s one of those books that stay with you long after you’ve finished it.
In Stephen King’s On Writing, he talks about the innate talent of writers and how we can improve and get better with age, but we’ll never venture far beyond the level of artistic creativity we are born with. I believe that to a degree. I’ve also noticed in sports that athletes can train to become elite, but there are always those few truly gifted people that make it look effortless as if they were touched by the hand of God. Lou Berney fits into that latter category. When I first read his novel, The Long and Faraway Gone, I kept muttering, “wow, this guy’s good.” In November Road, he cements that status. If you like crime novels that are filled with surprises and colorful characters, give it a try. You won’t be disappointed.
Lou Berney has written a very dark, at times violent, love story about a gangster on the run from his ruthless boss and a young mother on the run from her dead-end life. They each find a new future in very unexpected ways. I loved these fully realized characters, and the plot kept me turning the pages.
Brilliant, haunting, and deeply affecting, November Road is set around the turmoil of President Kennedy’s death, but it’s about so much more. Lou Berney has crafted a book that is at once a thriller, a love story, and an adventure—I think that makes this the great American novel of 2018. I loved every page.
Favorite Quotes:
What if someone happened to come round that corner right now and caught them skulking? Trouble in this business had a way of spreading, just like a cold or the clap. Guidry knew you could catch it from the wrong handshake, an unlucky glance.
The only poor decision was a decision you allowed someone else to make for you.
Charlotte longed to live in a place where it wasn’t so hard to tell the past from the future.
Her favorite movie, as a child, had been The Wizard of Oz, her favorite moment when Dorothy opened the door of her black-and-white farmhouse and stepped into a strange and wonderful land. Lucky Dorothy. Charlotte dipped her brush again and not for the first time imagined a tornado dropping from the sky and blowing her far away, into a world full of color.
My philosophy is that guilt is an unhealthy habit… It’s what other people try to make you feel so you’ll do what they want. But one life is all we ever get, as far as I know. Why give it away?
My Review:
It is still unclear what actually transpired and how deeply tangled the web had to have been leading up to that awful November day in Dallas in 1963. This book wasn’t about JFK but proposes a possible, highly likely, and often speculated version of events culminating and occurring after his horrific demise with additional storylines that provided a realistic slice of life for those along the path. The writing was superb and highly engaging. I was riveted to my Kindle and soaked in each well-chosen word like a sponge. I don’t often read this genre and this was my first exposure to the talents of Lou Berney, who is a gifted scribe. His storylines were dynamic, well-crafted, and ingeniously woven with mind prickling details. Yet I felt the true treasure of his creation was his vibrant and oddly endearing characters. I was thoroughly transported and only wished for more, but I’m greedy like that.
I’ve long been a huge fan of Lou Berney’s novels, especially The Long and Faraway Gone, which won an Edgar in 2016, along with several other prestigious awards, and which remains one of my favorite books of the last few years. Consequently, I’ve been very anxious to finally get my hands on his new book, November Road, which was released last week, and which has gotten rave notices in advance of the publication date. Simply put, the wait was more than worth it. November Road is a great novel and, like its predecessor, it’s one of those books that I’ll be rereading often in years to come.
The story is set in November 1963, in the days following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and it features two expertly-drawn protagonists. The first is Frank Guidry, a ranking member of the New Orleans mob, under the command of Carmen Marcello. A couple of weeks before the assassination, Guidry ran what seemed at the time to be a fairly inconsequential errand for Marcello. But the moment Guidry learns that the president has been shot in Dallas, he realizes that the task he performed was anything but inconsequential.
Guidry has always been loyal to Marcello and has been a valuable lieutenant to the mob boss; he should have no reason for concern. But then other people close to the Marcello family who had tenuous connections to the errand that Guidry ran are suddenly turning up dead and Guidry is reluctantly forced to recognize the fact that, in a situation as explosive as this, anyone can be deemed expendable.
Guidry decides that he has no choice other than to run. With a deadly killer hard on his trail, he heads for Vegas, hoping to connect with an old friend who becomes his only hope of escaping the fate that Marcello wants to deal him. But the mob has eyes and ears practically everywhere, and the challenge of reaching Vegas alive will be a daunting one.
The book’s second protagonist is Charlotte Roy, a housewife from Woodrow, Oklahoma, who was once the most adventurous eleven-year-old girl in her tiny town. But that was seventeen years ago, and in a place like Woodrow, life happens—especially if you’re a young woman and most especially if it’s still the middle of the Twentieth Century. Charlotte is married now with two young, precocious daughters. Her husband, Dooley, drinks, has trouble holding down a job, and has even more trouble supporting his family.
Charlotte wonders if she’s selfish to want more out of life, both for herself and for her daughters. “Woodrow was idyllic in many ways. Quaint, safe, friendly. But it was also interminably dull, as locked in its stubborn, small-minded ways, as resistant to new things and ideas, as Mr. Hotchkiss [her boss]. Charlotte longed to live in a place where it wasn’t so hard to tell the past from the future.”
Her husband would never consider the idea of moving to a larger city and, Charlotte knows that he’s never going to stop drinking and become the kind of husband and father that she and their daughters deserve. And so, practically on a whim, a few days after the Kennedy assassination, Charlotte quickly packs up some things, gathers up her daughters, and hits the road for Los Angeles, planning to stay with a distant relative for a short time while she begins a new life for the three of them in California. Along the way, her path will intersect with that of Frank Guidry and when it does, everything will change—for Frank, for Charlotte, and for her daughters.
It would be unfair to reveal any more, but suffice it to say that this is a richly textured novel with characters that are fully realized. Berney has clearly done a great deal of research, and the reader finds him- or herself fully immersed in the early 1960s. The settings, the attitudes, and the atmosphere feel exactly right, and the story grabs you from the opening page and then refuses to let go. Frank Guidry and Charlotte Roy are characters that will remain with the reader for a very long time, as will this excellent novel. A great read, and an easy five stars.
November Road is a thriller that defies categorization. A triumph of plot and prose and a brilliant depiction of the contradictions of 1960s America, the innocence, the violence, and the longing.
In November Road, Lou Berney shows you everything that crime fiction can be — a tightrope story that takes you across the entire landscape of America, lived by characters as real as anyone you’ve ever known… It’s the best book I’ve read this year — and second place isn’t even close.
Lou Berney is quickly becoming one of the great voices in crime fiction. November Road is a fresh take on the Kennedy assassination turning a that moment in history into a crime saga with heart. I was fortunate enough to check out an early edition, but it is out in the world today. Check it out.
Just nope.
Great character developement set in a time of great turmoil and change in American society. A very profound road trip.