A WRITER YOU NEED TO KNOW: WALLACE STROBY

Jersey Shore-based crime writer Wallace Stroby, a former newspaper colleague of mine, is about to get "Gone 'Til November," his third book published. Even though the work isn't available until January, I stumbled across a mini review of it on Publishers Weekly and decided to let my basement fans know about this underrated scribe. Seriously... Why his books aren't made into big screen features is still a mystery to me. In any case, check out this killer review:

PW: Gone 'til November Wallace Stroby. Minotaur, $24.99 (304p) ISBN 978-0-312-56024-9

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. (Jan.)

Fans of gritty crime noir will absolutely dig his style and I couldn't suggest more to check him out. The New York Times book review said, "Stroby does wonders with his blue-collar characters" and Gerald Petievich, author of To Live and Die in L.A. said of his debut novel "The Barbed Wire Kiss," that "A new member has been added to the Michael Connelly-Robert Crais-Harlan Coben club of crime fiction. This work marks the debut of a novelist of great promise."

Be sure to also visit his blog, aptly named The Heartbreak Blog (a nod to his second book).