S. A. Cosby

Roman Carruthers is 35, sharp, successful, and carefully distanced from Jefferson Run, Virginia — the small, struggling town where he grew up. He manages money for wealthy clients in Atlanta, and has cultivated a very specific skill set for making problems disappear, financial and otherwise. When his father Keith gets in what appears to be a car accident but probably wasn't, Roman comes home for the first time in five years. What he finds: his sister Neveah, quietly heroic, holding the show more family crematorium together with sheer will and exhaustion. His younger brother Dante, deep in debt to a pair of genuinely terrifying local drug lords. And a family still haunted by the night in 2003 when their mother Bonita disappeared. Described everywhere as The Godfather set in the Black South, with Shakespearean levels of tragic inevitability. The crematorium is not incidental — it does a lot of work in this book, and not just metaphorically. Netflix adaptation incoming from Steven Spielberg's company and the Obamas' Higher Ground.

[May contain spoilers]
The truth about Bonita's death is the novel's devastating core. In 2003, teenage Roman and Dante discovered their mother having an affair with one of their father's employees. When they confronted her, she struck Roman, a struggle ensued, and she accidentally fell and hit her head. Keith wasn't there — but he arrived to a dead wife and two horrified sons, and burned her remains in the crematorium to protect them all from prosecution. Fifty-two years of a secret. Neveah, who wasn't there that night, eventually finds where Keith hid their mother's ashes, concludes her father murdered her, and kills their comatose father herself by giving him aspirin knowing it will cause an aneurysm. When Roman finally tells her the truth, it's too late. She leaves town, cuts off all contact. Roman, who came home to fix things, has become something unrecognizable — he incinerated people alive in the family crematorium along the way. The final image is Roman planning to reshape the local criminal organization with his associate Khalil. There's no going back. Shakespearean is right.
What I think: This is absolutely your kind of book — brutal, propulsive, morally complex, character-driven, and it doesn't flinch. The crematorium twist is genuinely haunting. Roman's slow transformation into exactly what he was trying to fight is done with devastating precision. The one thing that might knock it slightly is the relentless darkness with zero relief — Cosby goes pitch black and stays there. show less

Gut-punch Rural Noir
Review of the Flatiron Books advanced reading copy paperback (2023) of the Flatiron Books hardcover/eBook/audio original (expected publication June 6, 2023).

"Ain't that the scary part? Whoever did ... did this is someone you know. Someone I know. Someone we all know," Carla said.
"No," Titus said flatly. "It's someone we thought we knew."

Crime writer S.A. 'Shawn' Cosby had a serious breakthrough with his 3rd novel Razorblade Tears (2021) jumping into 70K+ ratings on GR show more from the previous 31K+ ratings for his 2nd Blacktop Wasteland (2020) and 3K+ for his 1st My Darkest Prayer (2019). This 4th release is guaranteed to keep the momentum going for this writer who situates his plots in small town rural Virginia communities with elements of noir and hardboiled fiction with nods to many of the earlier great writers of the genre.

I managed to snag a rare paperback ARC of this upcoming release and found it to be even more of a compelling read than the earlier novels. Cosby is definitely crafting his books into compulsive reading territory and this novel is likely to give him yet another boost.

We are into raw gut-punch territory when the novel opens with a school shooting which is not all that it appears. Without getting spoilery, the shooting opens up an entirely different investigation of a possible team of serial killers who have been operating in the community for many years. Sheriff Titus Crowne is pulled in all directions while he investigates both the current case and the cold cases that it uncovers. He himself is recovering from a PTSD-inducing Waco-like incident which caused him to resign from the FBI and seek refuge in helping his home town. Despite his attempts to balance the conflicting forces of local rednecks marching to defend Confederate era statues and the opposition activism of the local Black community and churches, this is a powder-keg situation ready to explode, with the investigations only feeding the fire.

There is respite and periodic calm between the storms to be had in Crowne's home life, particularly through the relationship with his father and a somewhat estranged brother. Some romance conflicts also appear as he is distracted from his current girlfriend by the appearance of a past love who is a working reporter who suddenly appears on site to break the local news coverage onto the national scene.

I unreservedly recommend this upcoming book to previous S.A. Cosby fans and to new readers who are up for country noir with fast twists and turns!

Other Reviews, Trivia and Links
As I am writing this before the official release, there are no other reviews or interviews to link to yet. I would except an interview at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore YouTube channel as they have done Cosby interviews in the past, so look for that as the June 6, 2023 release date approaches. I will circle back with links when I can. show less

This definitely qualifies as hard-core crime.

Beauregard Montage (“Bug” for short) has had a career, like his father, of driving. Not taxicabs, buses, or race cars (although he does race his Plymouth Duster in street races for money). He’s a getaway driver, with a great reputation. He’s also a meticulous planner, for both the crime and the getaway, with a photographic memory. He’s got skills.

But he’s gone straight. He doesn’t want to live a replay of his father’s life. His show more father disappeared when he was growing up, leaving him with memories and mysteries. Bug doesn’t even know if his father is still alive.

So Bug went straight, and he’s trying to be a good husband and father to his wife and kids (including a daughter living with his ex). He wants his wife to have what his mother didn’t have — a husband and partner — and his kids to have the father he didn’t have.

He opened his own auto garage, repairing cars for his Red Hill County, Virginia neighbors. All the while he kept his father’s prized Plymouth Duster, modded out as an unbeatable street racing machine, especially with Bug’s skills as a driver.

The problem is that it’s all falling down around him. His mom’s nursing home bills, one daughter’s student loans, another’s upcoming college costs, . . . And his garage has a new competitor in town, one that is winning. He’s deep in the hole.

One thing he’s got going for him is his skills as a getaway driver. And his connections to people who could use him. That’s the temptation he gives in to, and then the hole he’s in just gets deeper and deeper and deeper. And, worst of all, he drags others in with him, including his best friend and partner and his sons.

How do you make a character who lies, steals, kills, and even tortures victims, and who jeopardizes his own family, a sympathetic character?

Well, you can start by making sure his opponents are the bad guys. But more than that, when the author builds the character’s background like Cosby does here, we see the character and his actions in the context of a life. Then it’s easier for us to let empathy go to work.

The less we know about a character, the less we can empathize — that’s pretty simple. That doesn’t mean that the more we know about a character the more we empathize —if the character is a product of a wealthy, privileged childhood and grows up to be a narcissistic, ego-driven nightmare of a person, we don’t empathize.

It’s the content not just the extent of what we know about him.

With Bug you get the desperation. And you get the temptation to think that if you can score one more time, a big enough score, you can pull everything together and get out. And then you get the frustration and the even deeper desperation when that one big score brings complications. Now you’re not out, you’re just deeper in, and worse, you’re dragging everyone you care about in with you.

He pulls it off (with his partners), not clean of course, but he pulls it off. You know there’s more, though — you’re only half way through the book, and besides, these kinds of stories just don’t have neat happy endings.

Bug’s partners are not of the honor-among-thieves types, although the loyalty of Bug’s friends provides both a sharp contrast and a kind of testament to the kind of person Bug would like to be.

One warning — this deserves an XBG rating, for extreme blood and guts. And even torture. The worst of it isn’t hidden behind a curtain, either. It’s right there on the page.

There are also some, to me anyway, over-the-top moments in Beauregard’s driving — special effects on paper. Not a major distraction, but a little bit of a detractor to me. I kind of like a very faint feel of the supernatural in a noirish story, but I’m not a fan of stunt-work.

Final tally for me — 4 stars. Compelling, hard, unrestrained story that’s more than just an entertaining crime story. Its themes of fatherhood and temptation bring it up a level. And very good, engaging writing. show less

Ike Randolph, Black ex-con, and Buddy Lee Jenkins, white ex-con, develop an unlikely friendship after their sons are murdered. Isiah Randolph and Derek Jenkins, the sons, were a married gay couple with a young daughter named Arriana. Neither Buddy Lee nor Ike had accepted the sexual orientation of his son when he was alive, but each realizes that the murders were hate crimes. Together, they gradually understand how foolish it was to have rejected their sons since their paternal love show more transcends all and their hearts ache for the sons they no longer have.

It becomes apparent early in the novel that the Blue Anarchists, a one-percenter motorcycle group like Hells Angels, were responsible for the deaths of Isiah and Derek. Isiah, a journalist, had written an article calling the hate group out for their transphobia. Since Ike and Buddy Lee did not trust the police investigation of their sons’ murders, they agreed to use personal resources to take on the violent haters. Each had criminal experiences and street smarts to rely upon in their quest to get revenge on the murderers.

It was difficult to stomach the violence that occurs throughout this story, but Razorblade Tears is a story that is violent by necessity. The violence is representative of hate wars in our society. Too many people suffer violent discrimination because of their sexual and gender identities. Some of the real-life attacks are not as physical as they were in this book but equally detrimental to the well-being of countless victims. Cosby does a fabulous job developing a poignant relationship between a Black guy and a white guy who had been decidedly racist. He also shows how two criminals who rejected their sons because of homophobia overcame their prejudices and became an ally of LGBTQ. The “razorblade” tears they shed over their past viewpoints are a sharp-cutting message to all readers. If these hardened criminals can see the path to acceptance, everybody can.
See my other reviews at https://quipsandquotes.net/ show less