10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Maestro of Crime Fiction Returns With a High-Octane Thriller
KING OF ASHES, by S.A. Cosby
S.A. Cosby's propulsive and powerful fifth novel of Southern noir, 'King of Ashes,' begins with a brief, haunting dream of youth, longing and blood. Roman Carruthers — the novel's protagonist, who escaped his crumbling hometown, Jefferson Run, Va., and now is a wealthy investment manager with a lavish lifestyle in Atlanta — wakes to learn that his father has been in a mysterious car accident and is in a coma.
Roman — cynical and pragmatic, imperious and loyal — returns home, but upon arrival, discovers that his family is in shambles. His chain-smoking sister, Neveah, is exhausted and embittered after having been left to shoulder the responsibility of managing the family crematory, and his younger brother, Dante, is adrift, struggling with addiction and acting more like a teenager than the 30-year-old that he is. Seeing them now, Roman realizes that when he fled Jefferson Run, his family felt abandoned by him, and as the eldest sibling, he wants to make things right.
But after a matter of hours back in town, it becomes violently clear that their father's 'accident' is connected to Dante. His brother, mired in shame and despair, is deep in debt to the local gang that dominates Jefferson Run. Since Dante has failed to pay, these lethal men want more than their standard pound of flesh. Roman, acting as a cunning businessman and Dante's big brother, imagines he is prepared to appease them.
Over the years, Roman has become an expert in fixing sordid misdeeds and trafficking in secrets — insider trading, his clients' scandals, his own sexual predilections. Except he has never had to deal with gangsters whose appetite for bloodshed is relentless, who kill and maim with impunity. This is not the world of mannered boardrooms where the human cost is a detached, neatly packaged bottom line. In order to protect his family and avenge his father, Roman must risk mirroring the gang's savagery and getting his soul dirty.
What follows is a gripping roller coaster ride of escalating danger in cars and crematories, punctuated by pulpy moments of dark glamour in the bedroom and the club, interspersed with elegiac meditations on the art of war. The story overflows with immersive velocity and crackling sensory details, and Cosby flawlessly conjures Jefferson Run as a poverty-stricken Southern city with a cratered economy and corrupt city officials, from the mayor to the police. Its abandoned buildings and decaying streets are dominated by this bloodthirsty local gang, whose businesses are drugs, guns, clubs and even the best restaurant in town.
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