In epic new Southern gothic thriller 'All the Sinners Bleed,' yes, there will be blood
The South may have found its greatest sleuth since Dave Robicheaux or Benoit Blanc in S.A. Cosby's new crime thriller "All the Sinners Bleed."
Shawn Andre Cosby has already established himself as a "Southern noir" specialist with novels like "Razorblade Tears" and "Blacktop Wasteland," winning an Anthony Award and attracting such fans as Barack Obama. With "All the Sinners Bleed," though, he hits a new pitch.
In it, Cosby introduces us to Titus Crown, a veteran FBI agent who's seen too much. Burned out after a rough case, Crown resigned and returned to rural Charon County, Virginia, to care for his ailing father. There, by a fluke that amazes even him, he's elected Charon County's first Black sheriff.
This in a Tidewater county where things haven't changed much since 1958, and where most white folks like it that way.
As "Sinners" opens, Titus thinks his big problem is with the local Sons of the Confederacy, a re-enactor group that's loudly defending Ol' Rebel Joe, the local knock-off Civil War monument. But then a call comes in before he can get his first Keurig down: a school shooting.
In a few minutes, Titus and some of his deputies are facing down Latrell Macdonald, a troubled young man with drug issues. Latrell, who aged out high school a few years prior, has re-entered Jefferson Davis High School and gunned down a beloved social studies teacher with his daddy's hunting rifle. Now, he's mumbling something about angels and biblical apocalypses.
After the situation quickly and sadly resolves itself, local whites grumble that Crown is a woke radical whose lax enforcement led to this sort of violence, while civil rights groups call him an Uncle Tom who gunned down an innocent Black boy for The Man.
We get the idea that Titus is not very good with the political side of sheriffing. What he is, though, is a gifted, dogged and thorough investigator.
He tries to figure out what made Latrell do what he did and follows a few leads.
The leads point to a weeping willow tree by the water on a semi-abandoned farm, where searchers find the bodies of seven teenagers. All were minorities. All were tortured before they died, in ways that might have made the Marquis de Sade sick. And all had the names of angels carved into their flesh.
Titus has a serial killer on his hands. And while The Establishment wants him to quiet things down (serial killers tend to scare away the tourists), he launches a manhunt against a cunning and ruthless foe.
Cosby, who was born in Newport News, knows his territory and can describe it eloquently, often with wry humor. I love his description of a local diner:
"Gilby's served down-home, unadulterated, nutritionally dubious Southern cuisine. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, hominy grits, turnip greens, buttermilk biscuits the size of your hand, baked and boiled him, fried fish of every ichthyological description, shoofly, pecan, chess and chocolate pie, and iced tea so sweet it made your A1C rise two points just by looking at it."
Like Faulkner, Cosby likes to play with big words, though his ear for rural Black and white speech is unerring. Dialogue is good, with side characters who are as flavorful as the menu at Gilby's, and a pace that picks up as the case rolls on.
Along the way, Cosby uses Titus as his mouthpiece for observations about the failings of Southern culture and on issues such as Confederate monuments, and naming your local high school after Jefferson Davis.
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"All the Sinners Bleed" will find a ready audience with hardboiled crime fans and with devotees of Thomas Harris who've felt lost since Hannibal Lecter retired.
Book review
'ALL THE SINNERS BLEED'
by S.A. Cosby
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Review of All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Crosby, a thriller of a novel
