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A Novel
by S. A. Cosby
Book Reviewed by: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...
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
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(Reviewed by Jacob Lenz-Avila).
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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If you liked All the Sinners Bleed, try these:
by Henry Wise
Published 2025
Holy City is the captivating debut from Henry Wise about a deputy sheriff who must work alongside an unpredictable private detective after he finds himself on the outs from his sheriff's department over his unwillingness to look the other way when an innocent man is arrested for murder.
by S. A. Cosby
Published 2022
A Black father. A white father. Two murdered sons. A quest for vengeance.
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When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which ...
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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.
