Mystery Review: All the Sinners Bleed starts with a school shooting and quickly escalates from there. This is the fourth crime novel by S.A. Cosby (my second) and it's another intense, tough, and compelling story confirming Faulkner's statement about the past. Not a mystery, more a thriller and police procedural that mixes in-depth characters with occasional graphic violence. Cosby wonderfully evokes the landscape and way of life in rural Virginia, though some of the characters are like no one you'd ever find there. In an interview Cosby noted being concerned that his writing might be too "country" to get published. That wasn't the problem with All the Sinners Bleed; the "country" was the best part. No, some of the narrative is more preachy, politically correct, and "city" than you'd ever find in the Virginia backwaters. Compare "Scott was the type of man who complained about the world being too sensitive these days without ever acknowledging the irony of his own fragility or privilege" with "Titus thought Scott was a spoiled brat." Which sounds more like rural Virginia? Any thoughts about "identity" and culture wars there are well-hidden beneath a thick crust of insular Southern suspicion. (Yes, I suffered serious trauma in rural Virginia.) But it's easy to overlook the odd break of verisimilitude in All the Sinners Bleed when the story keeps propelling the reader nonstop to the next page. I only complain because all the rest of the book is of such high quality that I expected more of the same. I have two more books by Cosby to read and then I'll be waiting impatiently for the next, along with everyone else. [4★]
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