S.A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed was a refreshing reminder that mysteries do not have to be badly written, predictable garbage (see my very recent experience reading Ruth Ware) and can, instead, hold rich writing, subtle characters and engaging plot.
Following the first black sheriff in Charon county (some southern town that is as much a character in the book as any of the people) (as an aside – how bananas is it that police officers are elected) as he investigates a serial killer, the book cares in equal measure for the thriller plot points that kept this reader up late as it does about the social context where seven black children could go missing with their disappearances uninvestigated for years. With some side plots about white supremacists protecting statues of confederate leaders and other threads following the aggressions that fill his day the reader sees the complexity and injustice Titus has to sit in or respond to just to do his job.
*spoiler: I appeciated, too, that the serial killer was not – as I spent most of the book assuming – a character we’d spent time with as readers, so it wasn’t a whodunnit so much as a thriller-mystery focused on Titus and how he finds the killer.
And some exceptional descriptions of dinner.
Literary Vice 