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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Jun 2023, 352 pages
Paperback:
Jul 9, 2024, 352 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Jacob Lenz-Avila
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The new novel from New York Times bestselling and Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning author S. A. Cosby, "one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction." —Washington Post.
After years of working as an FBI agent, Titus Crown returns home to Charon County, land of moonshine and cornbread, fist fights and honeysuckle. Seeing his hometown struggling with a bigoted police force inspires him to run for sheriff. He wins, and becomes the first Black sheriff in the history of the county.
Then a year to the day after his election, a young Black man is fatally shot by Titus's deputies.
Titus pledges to follow the truth wherever it leads. But no one expected he would unearth a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon.
Now, Titus must pull off the impossible: stay true to his instincts, prevent outright panic, and investigate a shocking crime in a small town where everyone knows everyone yet secrets flourish. All while also breaking up backroads bar fights and being forced to protect racist Confederate pride marchers.
For a Black man wearing a police uniform in the American South, that's no easy feat. But Charon is Titus's home and his heart, and he won't let the darkness overtake it. Even as it threatens to consume him...
ONE
Titus woke up five minutes before his alarm went off at 7:00 A.M. and made himself a cup of coffee in the Keurig Darlene had gotten him last Christmas. At the time she'd given it to him he'd thought it was an expensive gift for a relationship that was barely four months old. These days, Titus had to admit it was a damn good gift that he was grateful to have.
He'd gotten her a bottle of perfume.
He almost winced thinking back on it. If knowing your lover was a competition, Darlene was a gold medalist. Titus didn't even qualify for the bronze. Over the last ten months he'd forced himself to get exponentially better in the gift-giving department.
Titus sipped his coffee.
His last girlfriend before Darlene had said he was a great boyfriend but was awful at relationships. He didn't dispute that assessment.
Titus took another sip.
He heard the stairs creak as his father made his way down to the kitchen. That mournful cry of ancient wood had gotten him and Marquis in ...
This blood-and-tears detective thriller explores the complications, even contradictions, that social progress and the restructuring of power bring— complications not everyone has to face equally. All the Sinners Bleed is both an exciting thrill ride and an enriching meditation on race, authority, hate, and faith in America...continued
Full Review
(782 words)
(Reviewed by Jacob Lenz-Avila).
Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Small Mercies
On the basis of four novels, each better than the last (and All the Sinners Bleed the best of them all), it's fairly easy to say that American crime fiction has found its future and his name is S.A. Cosby. Eriq La Salle, Actor/Director/Producer and author of Laws of Wrath
With the release of All The Sinners Bleed, S. A. Cosby further cements the arrival of a great American author. Although the story is cleverly veiled as an engaging suspense/mystery, he manages to deftly examine issues of race, class and religion with impressive effectiveness. Loved the ride. Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author
An excellent, gritty novel about how eventually, all sins must be reckoned with...The action is nonstop and Titus has real depth...Layered. Dark. True.
In All the Sinners Bleed, as Titus Crown, first Black sheriff of Charon County, Virginia, faces down a group of Confederate Army reenactors parading through his town, he "[feels] his skin begin to crawl" and considers that "the Fourteenth Amendment had passed over a hundred years ago" and "racism was alive and well." The juxtaposition of these thoughts is a reminder both of how recently the United States government decided that Black people deserve full citizens' rights, and how much more action is required for that decision to sink in.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution is one of three Reconstruction Amendments passed in the aftermath of the Civil War (the others are the Thirteenth, abolishing slavery, and Fifteenth, ...
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