All the Sinners Bleed

As I was engrossed by Cosby’s previous two novels – “Blacktop Wasteland” and “Razorback Tears,” I was eager to read his newest work. And that it appeared on multiple “Best of…” lists was icing on the cake. Like his other books, it’s a roller coaster from the beginning. In the first 30 pages there’s a school shooting and the exposure of a dark and deeply disturbing video record of murders of children in the Virginia town of the story. Although the crimes in the found footage were described delicately, the subsequent murders were described in quite graphic and far more disturbing ways.

This wasn’t my main problem with the book though. While I liked the main character, the plot didn’t move quickly enough. This was in part because there were many sub-plots, based on “issues of the day” which bloated and bogged down the story. There’s too many to list and, while some were more interesting than others – a southern town grappling with whether to retain its Confederate statues; others weren’t – an old flame returns and leads the main character to question his cooling relationship with the “local woman.”

While not a bad read, it didn’t grip me like his two other novels I mentioned. If you’ve not read either of those, check them out instead of this one