A review by booksrockcal
All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I did not think it possible for S.A. Cosby to write a book I could love any more than I loved Razorblade Tears, but he’s done it with this one. The central character is a black man, FBI veteran, graduate of UVA and Columbia, who returns to his hometown in the Northern Neck of Virginia and is elected sheriff. The first black sheriff in a town that still worships its Confederate statue and has an active Civil War reenactor group. And a year after the sheriff’s  election, a there is a school shooting with a black man shooting a beloved white teacher - he is  then is shot by the sheriffs’ deputies. The school shooting investigation uncovers a serial killer, and the hunt for the serial killer implicates local religious leaders and the town’s leading white citizens. It leads the sheriff to examine issues from his own life involving race, privilege, class, religion, violence, and the south.  The mystery in this novel keeps the reader guessing but it’s the storytelling that makes it so compelling. Cosby is a gifted writer whose understanding and experience of the south evokes Faulkner, O’Connor, Poe- the writing is beautiful, Cosby’s use of metaphor striking, and the story is propulsive and harrowing. Of the South he says: ‘The South doesn’t change. You can try to hide the past, but it comes back in ways worse than the way it was before. Terrible ways.’  And that is the book in a nutshell.