It’s summer and I will settle myself in our little Berkshire garden with our cat Rosie. She’s all alone now since the sad passing of her brother General Sterling Price, named after Rooster Cogburn’s cat in ‘True Grit’ (named after a Confederate General, I am afraid), and I’ll open a book by one of authors I have discovered. Sometimes, often, there will be a beer or a cocktail on the table.
American crime fiction by S.A. Cosby
Bob Dylan claimed that nobody sings the blues like Blind Willie McTell. Well, nobody writes like S.A. Cosby. Shaun Cosby writes of the land of which Dylan sings in that great song, a land that has been ‘condemned’ or in the words of William Faulkner, ‘cursed by slavery’. To my mind Cosby, a black man from Virginia, must be the greatest thriller-writing talent America has produced in recent years and he writes not just about crime but about America.
Before the writing took off Cosby was working with his mortician wife, who ran a funeral home. Maybe naturally his first book was based around his work in his wife’s profession, one of the last occupations in which the colour-bar remained. He finally gained recognition in 2020 with Blacktop Wasteland. Cosby is a very generous man and he credits many others for helping him get started as a novelist and this in turn makes him very big-hearted towards other budding writers.
Blacktop Wasteland is the story of a former professional getaway driver who is trying to go straight but times are tough, his kids’ glasses and dental care do not come free and his mother faces eviction from her care home, so he is tempted back for that ‘last job’. Needless to say, the heist doesn’t go swimmingly. We have heard this story before, but no matter, what Cosby makes of it is what counts. He makes no attempt to glamorize his central character and he certainly does not imagine that crime is the solution to poverty inequality and racism. As the New York Times reviewer pointed out, this is the antithesis of ‘Django Unchained’.
Cosby’s stories are set in the old Confederacy (the southern States which seceded from the USA). It is a world of good old boy MAGA voters who want to feel proud of their history even if it is all about slavery, the Klan and Jim Crow laws. Cosby grew up there, attending Jackson Lee Elementary, a school that was named after two Rebel generals, when you’d think one was enough. Or too many.
He became aware of the history of the South when he realised that the pervading narrative was that the Civil War was all about aggressive Northerners oppressing righteous Southerners who just wanted to lead their life as before. ‘Gone with the Wind’ stuff, but when it came to writing it provided the ideal backdrop, all the more so because so few writers wanted to touch it. It’s divisive!
Lack of money cut short Cosby’s college education, but he remained a voracious reader. He later started to write and, on account of hard work and luck, that modest guy has ‘made it’.
Start with Black Top Wasteland and then move on to All the Sinners Bleed, the story of a black sheriff seeking a serial killer in a deeply divided community. And then read his other books, and anything he recommends, like Jordan Harper.
Jordan Harper – Hollywood novelist
Jordan Harper is a Hollywood script writer turned novelist. He knows LA very well; he knows how it ticks, and he knows that the real ‘deep state’ isn’t a bunch of liberal college professors and civil servants but rather the obscenely wealthy, who will do anything to manipulate the narrative and keep themselves above any real scrutiny. These are the people who fund Trump: right wing oligarchs and media moguls with a finger in every pie. They are of course the same people who also fund ‘think tanks’, the aim of which is also to control the story.
These people make sure to look after themselves and they employ fixers who will get them out of trouble. Cunning lawyers will be called in whilst publicists and media manipulators are employed to shape the news coverage and there are enforcers who will use physical violence, sometimes extreme. Harper’s protagonist in Everybody Knows is a clever but impecunious college graduate who has sold her soul to work for a ‘black bag’ LA PR agency which is called in when celebrities, politicians and members of the deep state get into trouble. Their task – metaphorically – is to bury the bodies by manipulating the narrative, be it by naked intimidation or getting tame journalists to muddy the water and peddle fake stories. She’s morally nuanced but then her boss is murdered and, along with a former (sacked) county sheriff, she endeavours to find out who killed him. This ends up opening a terrifying can of worms and she finds herself on the wrong side of obscenely rich and powerful people with skeletons on the closet who will stop at nothing to silence her and her partner. The writing is brilliant as is the depiction of LA, a town of tent cities existing alongside vast wealth. But more importantly Harper shows us the real ‘deep state’ which manipulates and abuses the American psyche.
If Kamala Harris wins, I hope the first thing she tells Keir Starmer is to stop being so damn scared and go on the offensive, because someone has to take on this deep state – which exists all over the ‘free’ world.
A final word
Another book into which I dip is Moby Dick, also about America and said to be the greatest novel in the English language. If you haven’t read it, buy a copy and start reading. It won’t be easy – this book is a tough read, but there will be moments of great epiphany. A paragraph is not enough to do this work justice – there will be an article. Just get yourself a copy and persevere.
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