New Jersey author Wallace Stroby goes for a change of scenery to deliver a powerful, tightly focused third novel about corruption, ambition and the choices that women make. Sara Cross is the only female sheriff’s deputy in St. Charles County on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Stroby doesn’t miss a beat in shaping Sara as strong woman with good instincts, sharp enough to one day be the sheriff, the current sheriff often tells her. But Stroby also is careful to show Sara’s flaws, making her even more realistic and appealing. Too often, Sara has picked the wrong man, “a burden” she is working on. Most important to this single mother is her 6-year-old son who is battling leukemia. She’s a heroine who could easily support a new series.
One evening Sara is called to a cypress swamp where fellow deputy—and former lover—Billy Flynn has just shot a young black man who had a bag of guns in his car. Billy claims self defense, and it appears that way to Sara at first too, but when she puts aside her still simmering feelings for the unreliable Billy, Sara begins to doubt his story. As Sara runs her own investigation, the action switches to New Jersey where a hit man, who is dying of cancer, has just been hired to come Florida to retrieve what was in the car. Gone ‘Til November moves at a brisk pace as Stroby adds a variety of surprising twists. The author’s sturdy plot is augmented by the his intriguing look at how money and ambition can often override one’s moral compass. While Stroby’s other novels have been set in his home state, this New Jersey author shows he knows Florida’s back roads and small towns just as well.
