Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby will be released on July 14, 2020 through Flatiron Books. I read it early because I invented time travel just for the purpose of reading this book early. It cost me millions of dollars and many relationships, but it was worth it because this book is amazing crime fiction.
I became wildly impressed with this author’s talent after reading My Darkest Prayer by S.A. Cosby last year. It is by far one of the books I have recommended the most to readers ever since I read it. If you are not certain about pre-ordering a novel from an author you haven’t read before, then check out My Darkest Prayer. Reading that book with sell Blacktop Wasteland to you better than anything else I can say.
First off, this title is great. How has there not been a book called Blacktop Wasteland before?
S.A. Cosby writes characters of all races and economic levels with gritty, unflinching truth. They are three-dimensional and desperately flawed. These characters have history that is told and even more history that is felt through their actions and their interactions in settings where you can feel the dirt, the oil smell, and the bad choices sticking to you.
I need to describe the unpredictability of this novel without giving away the brilliant twists that keep you barreling around the blind turns of these highways as unprepared as the characters are.
The novel opens with an illegal drag race that captures your attention from page one. In the process, you learn important things about the character in story in the midst of the action without realizing you’re getting to know these people like old friends. Probably the sort of friends your mother told you to stay away from. The thrilling scene plays out and you think you figured out how the characters are going to be hurt. At the end of that scene, still caught up in the action, Cosby drops the clues about what is really going on. I saw all of them laid out for me in the tension of the moment, but I didn’t put it all together until the real ending of that scene was revealed. Now, I realize I’m dealing with a different kind of story.
The traps and the needs of the main character and his loved ones are spelled out over the next few chapters. I see that his life is closing in on him from all sides and I feel it with him. I’m rooting for our anti-hero to stick with the straight life at the same time that I can’t wait for him to agree to be the driver on the next heist. He was born for this. The shadow of his father’s bad choices hangs over him as the old man is revered for a hero for exactly all the wrong reasons.
In the process, we build toward a man from the main character’s past who is his ticket back into that old life. I see where this is going. Wrong! I was wrong again. These characters are more complex and more layered than they seem. They are not plot devices and they are not predictable, flat characters. Not even the minor characters are allowed to be simple clichés.
No, our main character has to go a different route from the one we thought, and it is even worse. There are layers of trouble further down from the one we thought we were on and it is about to get even more dangerous.
We see the bad choice. We even see the warning of how it was a bad choice in the past. We also see how it is the choice our main character is going to have to make. These characters can’t help but to want terrible things that are doomed to destroy them, things that lead us to new levels we couldn’t predict from the last fork in the road that we couldn’t predict either.
As readers, we can see this is not going to go well for a hundred different reasons, then Cosby introduces the 101st reason we didn’t even think about.
Every story prides itself on its twists, but sometimes, in many stories, we even see those coming or we call foul on the author for not doing the groundwork to set up the character choices. Not this time. This time you are going to get caught up in these lives, this heist, and the wild ride that only one man with one car can possibly pull off. Everyone is going to have to pay for these choices, including the readers.
I could sell you on this book by sharing a dozen different scenes from a dozen different chapters, but I’d be robbing you of something important worse than the characters in this story hitting the target of their heist.
Is it possible for everyone to win and lose at the same time? Check out Blacktop Wasteland because you won’t believe what is possible.
S.A. Cosby is the most important new author I’ve encountered in crime fiction. He’s a voice you’ve got to hear a story from. You’ve got to. There are so many authors and stories out there that simply fail to deliver as much as you want from a story as a reader. S.A. Cosby is the exception you do not want to miss out on. I’ve read his first two novels and I’m ready for the third even while Blacktop Wasteland is up for preorder.
Check out Blacktop Wasteland up for preorder through July 14, 2020 and My Darkest Prayer by S.A. Cosby now.
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