Razorblade Tears

This is an easy contender for “Best Book I'm Going to Read This Year.” I was glad to know that Jerry Bruckheimer has already optioned this book for Paramount, because it is instantly cinematic, and it's going to make a great film.

SA Cosby takes two bottom-of-the-social-ladder everyman types, puts them together in a dark buddy action/revenge plot, but manages to make it about so much more than just two guys from opposite sides of the tracks in a small, poor town getting revenge on the men who killed their sons.

Ike Randolph, who is Black, and Buddy Lee, who is white, are not great people, and they know it. Ike is a former gang member who did some time. Buddy Lee is a white trash hick who also spent some time in the Graybar Hotel. They're older. They're set in their ways. They're coarse. They're unrefined.

And they each have a gay son. And those sons are married to each other.

Much to Ike and Buddy Lee's disappointment.

However, when those boys are murdered, Ike and Buddy Lee make an unusual partnership to set about finding out who murdered their boys, and to vow revenge on those that did it.

Along the way, Ike and Buddy Lee learn about themselves, and why their relationships with their sons went so wrong.

Expertly paced with excellent dialogue, this book was riveting. It unfurls in your mind in full 70mm Surround-Sound, just waiting patiently for its big screen debut.

While this is far and away a five-star book, I still had some knocks with Cosby's prose. For instance, the phrase, “Ike sucked his teeth” feels like it appears about 40 times in the book, to the point where it gets comical. Also, Cosby likes to shoehorn big similes into his work. As a writer and editor myself, I would have hacked out about half of them because he does it to reckless abandon.

However, the dialogue is where this book shines. Cosby has a finely tuned ear for the cadence of rural Virginia and Ike and Buddy Lee come alive in their exchanges with other characters, particularly in their quieter moments with each other when they discuss their sons.

This is a book about revenge. And there's a mystery element to it. But the themes of repression and redemption, and the overarching theme of acceptance will hit home. The finale is big and painful, and the denouement is sweet and closes the story perfectly.

This is one you won't want to miss.