Razorblade Tears - S. A. Cosby

As I got deeper and deeper into S.A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears, the author’s followup novel to the much-praised Blacktop Wastelands, the cynic in me began to whisper that Cosby must have been working from a “Woke Checklist” of sorts when he wrote this one. Just, for instance, consider the cast of characters: a black ex-con with a gay son, a white ex-con with a gay son, a beautiful little mixed-race girl, a trans-gender character, and a homophobic villain who associates with a white supremest motorcycle gang (Sons of Anarchy, anyone?). But the whispering cynic in me turned out to be wrong (or I simply stopped caring) because S.A. Cosby is one heck of a storyteller, and he had me turning pages so quickly that I forgot all about my theory. 

Neither Ike Randolph nor Buddy Lee Jenkins had much to do with their sons long before the two young men, a married couple, are gunned down together on the street. Ike and Buddy Lee are both violent men who spent significant time in prison while their sons were growing up, and the last thing either man was willing to accept after being released was having fathered a gay son. But now the boys are dead — and their guilt-ridden fathers want to know why. More importantly, they want revenge, and they are not going to sit back and wait for the cops to get that for them. The men believe it’s the least they can do now for their dead sons. 

When Buddy Lee approaches him about the two of them working together to solve the murders, all of Ike’s instincts tell him that Buddy Lee is not someone he wants to know at all, much less work with so intimately. But, Ike listens long enough to decide that revenging the murder may be the only chance he will ever have again to do anything for his son — even if it is way too late. Then the two of them start asking questions, the kind of question that makes some people very, very nervous…so nervous that they come after the guys asking those questions.

Bottom Line: Razorblade Tears is one of those books that readers most often hear described as a “page-turner.” In my experience, only a small percentage of the books described that way manage to live up to that promising billing. Razorblade Tears, though, pulls it off, even to making it look easy in the process. Admittedly, some of the violence in the novel may be a little farfetched, but that’s part of the fun. This one is for readers who are not put off by explicit violence and the threat of worse. If that’s you, you are going to love Razorblade Tears.

S. A. Cosby