“The South doesn’t change … just the names and the dates and the faces. And sometimes even those don’t change, not really. Sometimes it’s the same day and the same faces waiting for you when you close your eyes.
“Waiting for you in the dark.”
S.A. Cosby continues his string of intense Southern noir novels with "All the Sinners Bleed," a worthy successor to "Blacktop Wasteland" and "Razorblade Tears." His latest features a demonic serial killer terrorizing a small community in southeastern Virginia.
“The ability of one human to visit depravity upon another was as boundless as the sea and as varied as there were grains of sand on the beach.”
The book has good pacing that is only slightly challenged by a couple of bizarre scenes that just don't work and some super-long sentences. Oddly, there were also a few too many dragon similes -- four, to be exact.
"All the Sinners Bleed" tackles racism, grief, and religious zealotry -- weighty themes that can feel overwhelming in the same tale, but coalesce fairly well in Cosby's hands. For entertainment relief, the Raleigh-based band American Aquarium gets a notable mention.
“I could also have monkeys fly out of my butt. Don’t mean I’m gonna start buying bananas for toilet paper.”
Cosby's work is intense, but not overly challenging. These days, that's a feature and not a bug, as books that demand too much mentally or emotionally can feel overwhelming.
“ … But that was the thing about violence. It didn’t always wait for an invitation. Sometimes it saw a crack in the dam and then it flooded the whole valley.”
The ending is solid and the story is timely. Cosby knows grittiness, and he nails it again in "All the Sinners Bleed."
“It occurred to him no place was more confused by its past or more terrified of the future than the South.”
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