Skip to main content

GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER - Review

Wallace Stroby's unfortunately titled third novel is GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER. Unfortunate because of the Wyclef Jean song from a handful of years ago was a bit of a running joke amongst my friends. Indeed, when Mrs. Hungry Detective saw the dust jacket she separately remarked about the title choice. Now this should not matter if I am reviewing a book, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't.

My inability to act professionally aside in its own small way GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER is quite good. I say 'small way' because like much of the Crime Fiction I have read over the last 18-24 month GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER suffers from a crippling lack of gravitas.

Mr. Stroby is gifted with his characters. His twin protagonist, Sara the Deputy Sheriff and Morgan the aged Hitman make for a compelling dichotomy of conflict. Sara is a single mother with a very sick son and Morgan has cancer. Both are more than prepared to protect what is there's. Stroby never moralizes about Morgan's poor life choices and he never allows Sara to become the saintly selfless mother. They are believable, fallible, and human. By the end end you have hope for the both of them.

What works less well is the uninspired plot that involves Jersey gangsters, chasing after missing drug and gun money in Florida. Although it is more apt to call GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER a thriller, the central mystery never takes off. The action is rote, and the final showdown never engages or surprises.

I feel a lot of authors have been drinking the 'Character is King' Flavor-Aid as of late. And with that in mind GONE 'TIL NOVEMBER is lovely and heartbreaking at times. It is just too bad that these characters are stuck in a story that goes nowhere.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is it 'Aughts' or 'Oughts' - The Best of the Decade Pt. II

Better late than what quite possibly could have been never. I found the whole task of formulating and compiling this list to be not very enjoyable. Ugh. Not sure why this list proved laborious to produce. Holidays are not a good time for anything except opening gifts... like a 47" LG LCD television. Let's quit with the complaining and finish the list. If you started here you should go back to the beginning . 5 . DIRT - Sean Doolittle (2001) This was a real toss up for me. I could just as easily gone with the funny and brutal THE CLEAN UP. DIRT gets it by a nose because a lot of what I enjoy about Crime Fiction is discovery. THE CLEAN UP is a great book, one that you should read, but I knew it was going to be good going in. Mr. Doolittle is a terrific writer of human frailty. DIRT contains one of the great truisms of human behavior that we frantically keep secrets from our closest friends and family while just as equally hoping these secrets will be discovered and accepted. I ...
4 comments
Read more

The Very Best of Mr. Michael Connelly - Part 2

My August 31 post of The Hungry Detective ranked all the non-Bosch books. This list returns to take on the larger task of Mr. Heironimous Bosch. 9 Dragons made its appearance right before the Indy B'Con, and try as I might... ok I didn't try that hard... I didn't have time to read it for inclusion in these rankings. As a quick aside I don't want to undersell any of the books at the bottom of the list. Mr. Connelly doesn't know how to write a bad book, but in my case there have been occasions where I have not connected with his work. 13. THE NARROWS - 2004 It is because I love THE POET so much that this book is at the end of the list. When Mr. Connelly is at his best his works has the precision of a watchmaker. THE NARROWS just felt forced and not worthy of the intricacy of THE POET. 12. BLACK ICE - 1993 Second book. Third read. I thought the story was pretty flat. It has been well over a decade since I read this book, but the story of Mexican drug runner...
1 comment
Read more

Murder, Mayhem and the Return of Patrick and Angie

Back from Murder and Mayhem in Muskego IV . It was an ultimately very good weekend if not for a few hiccups. The original intention was to attend the mini-con with my sister who lives in Appleton. Alas, she caught one of the fifty or so colds she will have in the next three months. Everyone at The Hungry Detective office hopes she feels better, and we are already looking forward to attending the fifth installment with her next year. The second minor disappointment was the, I'm sure, entirely unavoidable absences of Duane Swierczynski and Harry Hunsicker . Bummer. (Ed Note. Duane's twitter feed notes a Christening... Cheers to that Mr. Swierczynski!) All of this is, of course, is weighted by the very wonderful news that Dennis Lehane , after taking the balance of a year off after finishing The Given Day, is writing a new book. And it is a Kenzie and Gennaro book. Woo-Hoo! In terms of my own education about Crime Fiction, Dennis is an important figure. I was reading a lot by the...
4 comments
Read more