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Book Reviewed by:A Black father. A white father. Two murdered sons. A quest for vengeance.
Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid.
The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah's white husband, Derek. Ike had never fully accepted his son but is devastated by his loss.
Derek's father Buddy Lee was almost as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed his father was a criminal. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though, and he wants to know who killed his boy.
Ike and Buddy Lee, two ex-cons with little else in common other than a criminal past and a love for their dead sons, band together in their desperate desire for revenge. In their quest to do better for their sons in death than they did in life, hardened men Ike and Buddy Lee will confront their own prejudices about their sons and each other, as they rain down vengeance upon those who hurt their boys.
Provocative and fast-paced, S. A. Cosby's Razorblade Tears is a story of bloody retribution, heartfelt change - and maybe even redemption.
Cosby leans away from a simple redemption arc, instead showing the emotional silence that follows Ike and Buddy Lee's chaotic behavior. In this space, the reader can feel their grief as well as the stark consequences of their choices. They thrive on conflict, and part of what makes losing their sons so hard is that they can no longer deal with their own uneasiness by antagonizing Isiah and Derek. They are left alone with their residual bigotry, which is no longer their sons' problem. Even as they support each other and attempt to right at least one wrong, they are aware that it will not make up for the past, and this lends a distinct sense of gravity to the book's events despite Cosby's entertaining writing...continued
Full Review
(708 words)
(Reviewed by Elisabeth Cook).
In S.A. Cosby's Razorblade Tears, Ike Randolph and Buddy Lee Jenkins attempt to solve the murder of their sons, Isiah and Derek, by sorting through the married couple's former lives in Richmond, Virginia. As they speak to Isiah and Derek's friends and acquaintances, they put together a better picture of who their sons were, and of the struggles and community that made up their reality as queer men. A bartender, Tex, explains to Ike and Buddy Lee, "Richmond's a pretty good place to live if you're gay or queer or whatever, but ... we still in the South. Unless you straight and white you gotta watch your back." Tex's statement arguably doesn't only apply to the Southern United States, but his larger point rings true: Richmond, like many ...
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Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author
Razorblade Tears is superb. No doubt, S. A. Cosby is not only the future of crime fiction but of any fiction where the words are strong, the characters are strong and the story has a resonance that cuts right to the heart of the most important questions of our times.
