Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family—and the family business—together.
Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger.
What more can we say about Virginia author SA Cosby: a superlative storyteller who ‘broke through’ during COVID after a long apprenticeship working on his craft, and who’s brought a welcome blue collar African American perspective to rural noir alongside a great touch for character and action?
With superb novels like Blacktop Wasteland, Razorblade Tears, and All the Sinners Bleed he has catapulted himself in a few short years to the highest echelons of top-quality crime writing, along with New York Times bestseller status and shelves creaking under the weight of many awards.
Cosby writes terrific stories, and terrific sentences, and that’s on show once more in his latest novel King of Ashes, a thrilling and dark take on a twisted American Dream cum Shakespearean tragedy.
Roman Carruthers is living the high life in Atlanta, a financial advisor to the stars, when he’s called back to his hometown by his sister Neveah when their father ends up in a coma following a hit-and-run incident. Maybe not an accident, given their younger brother Dante’s deep debts to some very, very dangerous local gangsters. The Carruthers family was built on fire; their parents began their own crematorium business, only for their mother to vanish following an affair. Many in the town, believe their father put her body into the flames. Some in their family, too.
Trying to hold together the family that he’d left behind, Roman quickly finds his brains and charm may not grant him easy passage with the ultra-violent gangsters who’ve infected Jefferson Run.
But can he buy his way out of trouble with his financial wizardry? He and Dante fall into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse that pushes them to the darkest parts of their personalities, while Neveah is determined to uncover the truth behind their mother’s disappearance; can the siblings survive?
In King of Ashes, Cosby crafts an exquisite thriller; the pages whir by on superb prose. Guilt, sacrifice, and family secrets collide. Everything burns, Roman’s father used to say, but will he have to cast his own soul into the fire to save his family?
Building to a cataclysmic finale, Cosby once again propels readers on one hell of a ride.
Excellent. Highly recommended for crime/thriller readers who can handle a bit of the darker stuff.
[This review was first written for Deadly Pleasures magazine in the United States]
Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.
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