Book Review - All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby

Title: All the Sinners Bleed
Author: S.A. Cosby
Genre: Mystery/ Fiction/ Thriller
Published: 2023
 
Description: Titus Crown is the first black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virgina. In recent decades, Charon has had only two murders. After years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows bettern than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface.
 
Then a year to the day after Titus’s election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the students is fatally shot by Titus’s deputies. Those festering secrets are now out in the open and ready to tear the town apart.
 
As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes and a serial killer who has been hiding in pain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon. With the killer’s possible connection to a local church and the town’s harrowing history weighing on him, Titus projects confidence about closing the case while concealing a painful secret from his own past. At the same time, he also has to content with a far-right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of the town’s Confederate history.
 
Review: The story takes place in 2017, but it could easily be 2024. Titus Crown has been elected the first black sheriff of Charon County. He has brough his experience as a former FBI agent to this depraved rural area where, besides notorious discrimination, little criminal activity occurs. One day he receives an alarming call from one of his deputies. There is a school shooting. When Titus arrives at school with his team, there is great panic. The black perpetrator comes running out of the school and is shot by two of Titus’s team members. Inside lies the body of a beloved teacher. It is the beginning of a nerve-wrecking investigation into the motive and cause.
 
Author S.A. Cosby has a masterful sense of timing. All the components are of high quality. The dialogue, the character development, the sequence of events, the plot twists and turns, and the uncertainty that stays upright until the last page.
 
The crimes in the book are gruesome and are described in detail and explicitly. There is a deeper reason for being explicit. The shock it brings to readers is meant to make us thing. About how condescendingly many people behave toward others and how narrow-mindedness can lead to a sense of superiority.
 
The books also deals with religion, which I’m not always comfortable reading about. But it’s viewed from various perspectives, one is not better than the other. It could be more confrontational though, if you are religious yourself. I found is an additional component that gave even more interpretation to the underlying themes.
 
“All the Sinners Bleed” has many layers, interesting characters, an intriguing small-town mystery, tension and strong plot twists.
 
Rating: 4,5/ 5