Reviews provided by Syndetics
Publishers Weekly Review
A Virginia man is sucked into a brutal drug syndicate in this fitfully inspired crime novel from bestseller Cosby (All the Sinners Bleed). After a long absence, Atlanta finance manager Roman Caruthers returns home to Jefferson Run, Va., where his father is in a coma after a suspicious car accident. When the accident gets linked to his younger brother Dante's drug dealing, Roman offers his financial expertise to the Black Baron Boys, a gang led by brothers Torrent and Tranquil Gilchrist, who are as inclined to murder Dante as to let Roman help settle his several-hundred-thousand-dollar debt. Engaging with criminals sets Roman on a path of escalating violence that builds to a tragic, near-Shakespearean crescendo. Meanwhile, Roman and Dante's sister, Neveah, reinvestigates the still unsolved disappearance of their mother a decade earlier. En route to the novel's tragic finale, Cosby hits some off notes: Roman's passage from rescuer to aspiring kingpin is almost too smooth, his growing appetite for violence is overplayed and undermotivated, and the book's unyielding nihilism can feel more suffocating than powerful. Still, Cosby continues to excel at evocative scene-setting and drawing richly detailed portraits of rural Black family life. This is best suited to the author's devoted fans. Agent: Josh Getzler, HG Literary. (June)
Booklist Review
Roman Carruthers did it. He got out. He left the dying town of Jefferson Run, Virginia, and he built himself a prosperous life making money for other people. When he learns that his father is in a coma after a car accident, he flies home immediately to find a family in disarray: a sister who's become obsessed with the long-ago disappearance of their mother, and a brother who's deep in debt to some very bad people. Can Roman somehow find a way to bring peace to his family, even as his father lies dying? Cosby has published one magnificent crime novel after another, beginning with 2019's My Darkest Prayer, and this new book spotlights the author's gift for building complex characters. It also continues his exploration of the dark places humans keep hidden within us. His dialogue, too, is pitch-perfect: colloquial and idiomatic, reflecting the education and upbringing of his characters--it feels like we're eavesdropping on real people. A stunning novel.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Cosby's rural southern noir mysteries have become consistent best-sellers, and this one comes out in time for beach read season.
Kirkus Book Review
Deadly trouble awaits Roman Carruthers in his corrupt hometown when the Black wealth management whiz attempts to outwit a murderous drug gang threatening his family. The Atlanta-based Roman's weak-willed, strung out younger brother, Dante, and an ill-fated crony have incurred a sizable drug debt by consuming rather than dealing most of the Molly and heroin they obtained from the notorious Black Baron Boys. Led by the ruthless Torrent and his cooler-tempered sibling, Tranquil, the BBB have expressed their displeasure with Dante by running his father, founder of a family-run crematorium, off the road, leaving him in a coma. Having never encountered a situation he couldn't wheel and deal his way out of, the self-regarding Roman offers to cover the debt and much more by reinvesting the BBB's money. Their immediate answer is to knock his teeth out. But with visions of using the crematorium (Dante's inferno?) to burn up their victims, they go along with him--to a point. Roman, like his brother and sister, Neveah, is haunted by the disappearance of their mother when they were teens. To expiate his pain, he visits a dominatrix while Neveah--who increasingly believes rumors that her jealous father did her mother in--sleeps with a crooked cop. In making the transition from slick operator to cold-blooded instigator of violence himself, Roman becomes the latest in a long line of fictional Southerners to strike a deal with the devil (as in the filmSinners, fire plays a big role). The plot sometimes wobbles--Roman pursues an unlikely romance with Torrent's smart and warmly appealing half sister. But Cosby keeps things tense, making great use of the crematorium and freshening the genre with lofty philosophizing: "To Roman, it felt like life, existence, was a stygian wheel that had spun on a bitter axis." Rarely has a crime fiction family been given a more bitter spin than this one. Another strong outing by a modern noir master. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
TextSeries: Thorndike Press large print Black voicesPublisher: Waterville, Maine : Thorndike Press, a part of Gale, a Cengage Company, 2025Copyright date: ©2025Edition: Large print editionDescription: 573 pages (large print) ; 23 cmContent type: