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S.A. Cosby is a Rising Star in the Rural Literary Scene [1]
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Date: 2025-03-06
Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in The Good, the Bad, and the Elegy, a newsletter from the Daily Yonder focused on the best, and worst, in rural media, entertainment, and culture. Every other Thursday, it features reviews, retrospectives, recommendations, and more. You can join the mailing list at the bottom of this article to receive future editions in your inbox
Shawn Cosby is one of those people who, when you meet him, seems to fit his reputation – in this case, as the embodiment of the new South and a rising rural literary scene.
Wearing his ever-present cap, jeans, and checked shirt, Cosby is solidly built. His hands, shaking mine at the Bouchercon Crime Writers Convention in Nashville this past August, were strong and rough. They’re the hands of a man who’s always worked for a living, most recently in his wife Kimberly Redmond Cosby’s funeral home in small-town Virginia.
At age 51, the man known to his readers as S.A. Cosby has taken the crime and thriller genre by storm. His rural noir novels have won all the top honors the genre has to offer and have been recommended by many high-profile tastemakers, including a former U.S. president.
People were playing it cool at a Bouchercon reception Cosby attended, myself included as I introduced him to my friend Colin Harker, an author of gothic terror tales. Perhaps we writers all hoped that some of Cosby’s talent and hard-earned good fortune would rub off on us. After all, Cosby is leading a new generation of writers following a path trod by Agatha Christie, Lee Child, Walter Mosley, Eleanor Taylor Bland, and Dennis Lehane.
Like these forebears, Cosby has concentrated on writing violent and twisting tales, often set in small cities and towns. His is a world of lonely rural roads and places where everybody knows everybody – and their dark pasts.
Textbook
“The first emotion we learn is pain,” Cosby wrote for CrimeReads in 2020, when his book “Blacktop Wasteland” was published. “The sting of the hot stove. The bite of the sharp knife. It is a university without matriculation. A class that is never dismissed. And crime novels are our textbooks for an exam that never ends.”
The characters in Cosby’s books – the three best known are “Blacktop Wasteland,” “Razorblade Tears,” and “All the Sinners Bleed’ – are damaged by pain and in some cases strengthened by it.
In “Blacktop Wasteland,” protagonist “Bug” Montage is living with the kind of pain many of us feel: scars from the past, threats on the horizon, and the pressure to do everything he can to help his loved ones. He’s a mechanic in a small shop in rural Virginia, but it’s his talent as a driver that threatens to pull him to the wrong side of the law. The novel won the Anthony Award from the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
“Razorblade Tears,” Cosby’s 2021 novel, features two men living with nearly unbearable pain: Ike Randolph and Buddy Lee are fathers whose sons, who were a couple, were killed. Ike and Buddy, each tortured by how they failed their sons, are led to a path of vengeance. They’re tormented by their decisions but would be even more anguished if they didn’t act. The novel was shortlisted for the Anthony Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize and won the Macavity Award, among others.
Cover art for ‘Blacktop Wasteland’ (2020) (Credit: Macmillan Publishers). Cover art for ‘Razorblade Tears’ (2021) (Credit: Macmillan Publishers). Cover art for ‘All the Sinners Bleed’ (2023) (Credit: Macmillan Publishers).
Like Cosby’s earlier work, 2023’s “All the Sinners Bleed” is also a dark and violent book, but it might be his most mainstream work. Its leader character, a Black sheriff named Titus Crown, feels as if he could anchor an ongoing series of novels or a streaming TV adaptation like those featuring Alex Cross and Jack Reacher. But “All the Sinners Bleed” isn’t warm and fuzzy, as Crown investigates horrible crimes occurring under the surface in his little rural community. The novel also won the Anthony Award and was shortlisted for the Edgar Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Awards are one thing, but the impact of Cosby’s writing has been far-reaching. The novels are searing in their depictions of man’s foibles and shortcomings and are raw in exploring race, class, and gender. The characters struggle with anger, violence, and decisions resulting from how they’re treated and perceived by others.
Cosby meanwhile is perceived by legions of readers as a truth-teller who also knows how to tell an exciting tale. In 2022, Cosby’s profile was elevated by no less a cultural trendsetter than Barack Obama, who named “Razorblade Tears” among 14 books on his summer reading list.
Cosby posted in response, “I can’t speak … there are no words … I’m crying right now, not Razorblade Tears but Tears of Joy. All Things Are Possible!!!”
One year later, “All the Sinners Bleed” likewise made Obama’s 2023 summer reading list.
The fame for the son of Gloucester, Virginia, didn’t end there.
Up Next
I expect it’s been a while since Cosby regularly picked up remains and drove a hearse for his funeral director wife, although I’m sure he keeps a hand in here and there. A 2021 New York Times profile noted that he’s able to spend less time at the family business “since his crime novels began to appear on national bestseller lists.”
Cosby is likely to have even less time in the next few years. “Blacktop Wasteland” and “Razorblade Tears” have been optioned for film.
His next novel, “King of Ashes,” doesn’t come out until June 2025 but was already the subject of a “highly competitive auction” for filming rights, Variety reported in November. The winning bidders were Netflix, Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, and Higher Ground Productions, the partners in which are Barack and Michelle Obama.
Variety noted, “the author’s popularity has exploded in recent years, as has his brand of Southern noir crime fiction.”
That New York Times profile described Cosby as right at home in the genre he’s helped spark for a new generation of talented Southern and rural crime writers.
“As a Black crime writer in the rural South, Cosby is an anomaly. Despite Attica Locke’s claim on red-dirt East Texas, most of the better-known African American crime writers have set their stories in urban environments: Think of Chester Himes’s Harlem detective series, or Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins novels, set primarily in Los Angeles. “’I think for a lot of African American writers, especially those who moved away from the South, there’s just such a history here, and that can be painful and abhorrent,’ Cosby says. ‘A lot of people don’t want to tackle it.’”
For this author who has made explorations of pain the “foundation of his writing philosophy,” an enduring connection to his Southern, rural roots has ensured it’s a strong foundation.
S.A. Cosby’s novels are available via your public library or wherever you buy books.
Keith Roysdon is a Tennessee-based writer of fiction, true crime, and pop culture.
This article first appeared in The Good, the Bad, and the Elegy, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder focused on the best, and worst, in rural media, entertainment, and culture. Every other Thursday, it features reviews, recommendations, retrospectives, and more. Join the mailing list today to have future editions delivered straight to your inbox.
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