Lou Berney

Lou Berney's new novel is November Road.

From his Q&A with Don Winslow:

What was the original inspiration for NOVEMBER ROAD?

My brother-in-law, who is several years older than me, grew up in rural Kansas in the 1960s. When he was a kid, his parents warned him to never ride his bike to the next town over. He found out later that it was because the next town over was where the mob sent guys to “cool-off” and lay low after a job. I was fascinated by the idea of a dangerous, big-city criminal forced into contact with a world, and with people, he’d never really encountered before.

The novel follows three principal characters: a charmingly amoral mob fixer, a wife and mother from small town Oklahoma, and a terrifying hit man. Why did you choose to tell the story from these points of view?

The real joy in writing fiction for me is getting into different heads and seeing the world in ways that I normally wouldn’t. In this novel, I wanted to create three very different characters who all experience something similar: their lives are upended by events outside their control and, because of that, they’re all given the opportunity to change. Whether they do change or not, and in what specific ways, was something I didn’t really figure out until...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Lou Berney's website.

The Page 69 Test: Gutshot Straight.

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