Gone 'til November

Starred review from November 2, 2009
Tormented lives brutally intersect in Stroby's powerful thriller, the possible first in a new series to feature Sara Cross, the lone woman sheriff's deputy in Florida's St. Charles County. One night, Cross, a single mother who's coping with her son's leukemia and the remnants of a two-years-gone postdivorce fling with fellow deputy Billy Flynn, arrives on the edge of a cypress swamp where Flynn has just shot a 22-year-old black man from New Jersey allegedly fleeing a traffic stop. Sara tries to smother her still-simmering lust for no-good Billy, but her cop instincts drive her toward a dismaying truth that hurtles her into a violent showdown with an aging New Jersey contract killer stricken with a rare cancer. While relentlessly probing the eternal mystery of why bright and capable women fall for dangerous losers, Stroby (The Heartbreak Lounge
) explores moral choices that leave his devastatingly real characters torn between doing nothing and risking everything.

Starred review from January 1, 2010
As if it weren't nerve-wracking enough to be a deputy and a mom, suddenly she's a target.

Privacy's a joke in tiny Hopedale, Fla. So when Deputy Sara Cross and Deputy Billy Flynn become lovers, everybody knows it almost before they do. Nor does it stay news long when two years later they break up. Sara's coming to her senses, conventional wisdom maintains, since everybody also knows that for all his charm and good looks, Billy lacks substance, whereas all you have to do is watch Sara mothering her ailing six-year-old son to know that she's a rock. But rock or no, Sara is one of those women who all too often lets her heart rule her head, and on the night of a fatal shooting, part of her senses that it's a mistake to accept Billy's version of how it all went down. Yes, the explanation is plausible; yes, there are weapons stashed away in the young black man's car; and yes, when Billy fired it might well have been by the book. But soon enough strangers arrive in Hopedale—hard, big-city, dangerous men following stolen money, who are after Billy because they're sure he knows where it is. And after Sara, certain she does, too.

A strong cast and energetic storytelling. But it's Sara, so human and so beset, who makes this another standout for Stroby (The Heartbreak Lounge, 2008, etc.).

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 15, 2009
When a fellow officerand ex-loverkills a motorist from New Jersey and illegal guns are found in his car, it is ruled a righteous kill. However, Hopedale, FL, Deputy Sheriff Sara Cross sees a number of inconsistencies in the deputy's story, and soon she is conducting a covert investigation that leads to an unpleasant and dangerous end. VERDICT Stroby ("Heartbreak Lounge, The Barbed-Wire Kiss") begins his gritty new series with a bang. Sure to appeal to fans of Edna Buchanan and John Sandford.

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2009
A young black man is killed after an apparently routine traffic stop; as the second officer at the scene, Deputy Sheriff Sara Cross job is to find out exactly what happened from her fellow deputy (and former lover) Billy Flynn. The dead man was armed, and a cache of weapons is found in the car. Internal Affairs clears Flynn of any wrongdoing, but Sara, a single parent already burdened by her sons leukemia, profound loneliness, and continuing feelings for Flynn, isnt so sure; she must find out if her former lover is a killer. Gone til November is rock-solid crime fiction that melds compelling characters, crisp writing, and a finely rendered portrait of Old Florida, the states thinly populated, less-storied interior. Sara and Morgan, an aging career criminal who has just been diagnosed with cancer, are Strobys best creations. Morgan is ruthless and resourceful, but he also has a quiet dignity and a streak of humanity that may have readers picturing actor Morgan Freeman.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)