Cosby, S.A. All The Sinners Bleed. New York : Flatiron Books, 2023.
Content Warnings: death, torture, rape, gore, violence, racial slurs, school shootings, pedophilia.
If you like your mysteries/thrillers with a good dose of Southern flavor and existential crisis, read All the Sinners Bleed. This book was on several “Best Books of 2023” lists, but I just picked it up (via Libby eaudiobook) last month.
Titus Crown is the sheriff of Charon County, Virginia. The rural county doesn’t have many major crimes, and Crown likes it that way. He came back home after working at the FBI for many years, at least in part to take care of his aging father. While his first year on the job hasn’t been perfect, he’s feeling okay about how he has done.
But then there is a shooting at the high school. As he and his deputies rush in, the shooter meets them on the steps, and is killed by two of his deputies. Before he is killed, the shooter admits to killing a teacher, but also tells them the teacher committed horrible crimes. Crown finds himself stuck – between the white residents who want to make the teacher a martyr and the black residents who believe the shooting of yet another black man is about race. His pleas to allow the investigation to reveal what really happened falls on deaf ears on both sides.
The investigation discovers a group of men who have been abusing and killing children for years, and one of that group is still out there, watching the investigation and biding their time before striking. Crown’s family and friends are in danger, as is anyone who might be able to identify the killer.
Crown also is dealing with the planned march by a far-right Confederate group during the annual Fall Festival, and the opposition to the parade from people from his father’s church, who worked so hard to get a black man elected to the sheriff’s office. They feel betrayed by him, and he feels frustrated with them and their lack of trust in him to do the right, and the legal, thing in allowing the parade.
The plot of this book is incredible, but what really shines is the characters. Crown is a conflicted man with way too much on his shoulders. His father is the character I’d like most to meet – he often offered a little bit of levity in a very heavy book, but he also was there for his sons during their hardest times. We also get to know Crown’s deputies, his brother, and his current girlfriend, as well as his ex-girlfriend who is in town to cover this horrible crime. Since I enjoyed this as an audiobook, I also have the praise the narrator, Adam Lazarre-White. He did a wonderful job of bringing these characters to life.
This book also shines a light on race relations in the South in the present day. While things look better on the surface, there is still a lot of racism, hatred and distrust when you dig down just a little into Charon’s psyche. Residents of the South might find themselves nodding along as Cosby describes some of the issues Charon residents face, and how race is intertwined with education, housing, jobs and religion. This book gave me a lot to think about, and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in racial justice.
Mary Beth Adams is the Community Engagement Librarian for Alamance County Public Libraries. She can be reached at madams@alamancelibraries.org.