Blacktop Wasteland
Ratings52
Average rating4.4
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner • New York Times Notable Book • NPR’s Best Books of the Year • BookPage’s #1 Mystery and Suspense of the Year • Sun Sentinel’s #1 Best Mystery of the Year
“I loved Blacktop Wasteland...[A] fast-paced, bareknuckle thriller.” -Stephen King
“A roaring, full-throttle thriller, crackling with tension and charm.” -The New York Times Book Review
"One of the year's strongest novels." -Sun Sentinel
A husband, a father, a son, a business owner...And the best getaway driver east of the Mississippi.
Beauregard “Bug” Montage is an honest mechanic, a loving husband, and a hard-working dad. Bug knows there’s no future in the man he used to be: known from the hills of North Carolina to the beaches of Florida as the best wheelman on the East Coast.
He thought he'd left all that behind him, but as his carefully built new life begins to crumble, he finds himself drawn inexorably back into a world of blood and bullets. When a smooth-talking former associate comes calling with a can't-miss jewelry store heist, Bug feels he has no choice but to get back in the driver's seat. And Bug is at his best where the scent of gasoline mixes with the smell of fear.
Haunted by the ghost of who he used to be and the father who disappeared when he needed him most, Bug must find a way to navigate this blacktop wasteland...or die trying.
Like Ocean’s Eleven meets Drive, with a Southern noir twist, S. A. Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland is a searing, operatic story of a man pushed to his limits by poverty, race, and his own former life of crime.
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It's been a long time since I've read a book this savage, this pained and frankly this compelling. It was perfection. Gritty southern noir. I loved every word of it. Those of us who know Virginia will revel in the familiar locales. Those of us who love a good crime novel will be thrilled with the story and the perfect plotting. 10 out of 10. Highly recommend.
read for the tarot readathon 2023: ace of cups
s.a. cosby literally has the perfect balance of wellcrafted writting, fleshed out characters, commentary, and high action/gore. he eats down
I was almost dreading this book. The title itself evokes nothing but unnerving misfortune and I am afraid it plays out that way. But this book is a gem. Crafted as a “heist/thriller” genre book, it is so much more than that. The care and meticulousness in crafting the character of Bug, mean that this is a novel that succeeds in exploring the search for one's “true self”. Not quite a debut novel but almost. An extraordinary one at that.
