Synopsis:
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“Pick up the novel everyone will be talking about.” —The Atlantic
“Dark, riveting, and accomplished.” —Washington Post
“Propulsive and powerful. . . A gripping roller coaster ride of escalating danger.” —New York Times Book Review
Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author S. A. Cosby returns with King of Ashes, a Godfather-inspired Southern crime epic and dazzling family drama.
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.
Roman, a financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, has some money to help buy his brother out of trouble. But in his work with wannabe tough guys, he’s forgotten that there are real gangsters out there. As his bargaining chips go up in smoke, Roman realizes that he has only one thing left to offer to save his brother: himself, and his own particular set of skills.
Roman begins his work for the criminals while Neveah tries to uncover the long-ago mystery of what happened to their mother, who disappeared when they were teenagers. But Roman is far less of a pushover than the gangsters realize. He is willing to do anything to save his family. Anything.
Because everything burns.
“A fast-paced thriller that will have readers asking whether the ends justify the means if there is no end in sight. . . Reminiscent of the great tragedies, this is Cosby at his best.”
—Library Journal, starred review
Review:
After his father is attacked and left comatose, Roman Carruthers returns home to discover his brother is deep in debt to local gangsters and his sister on the brink, obsessed with finding out the truth about their mother’s disappearance when they were teens and carrying on with a crooked cop, all while trying to keep their family business up and running. Roman tries to square Dante’s debt with the BBB gang, but it soon becomes clear that no matter how much they paid they’ll never be free, and soon he finds himself embroiled with the vicious and sociopathic Tranquil and Torrent, and hellbent on destroying the gang from the inside.
S.A. Cosby flew into the crime scene like a bat out of hell with his Big Publishing debut, Blacktop Wasteland, back in the summer of 2020 and he hasn’t slowed down a bit. Five books and five years later, he’s quickly earned his place as one of the crime genre’s absolute best, not to mention becoming a favorite author of mine in short order, thanks to consistently turning out gritty, character-rich Southern crime epics. His latest, King of Ashes, is his best one yet, and that’s saying an awful lot considering just how damn good his previous books are. This one is an absolute powder keg.
Sprawling and dark, King of Ashes is also the kind of book that only gets better and more rewarding with each turn of the page. Much of this is down to Roman himself. He’s a financial advisor to Atlanta’s biggest hip-hop stars and has made his bread getting them rich. He’s smart and savvy with money, and when he first meets Tranquil and Torrent he mistakes their street gangster ethos for the fake, recording studio-ready gangstas he’s been working with. It’s a lesson that costs dearly, and a mistake he won’t soon repeat. As his plans for dealing with these two psychotics evolve, he finds himself sinking deeper into the muck, while readers are left to wonder just how far Roman is willing to go to protect his family and exact his vengeance.
Cosby takes his time building up, while simultaneously degrading, Roman over the course of numerous bloody and fire-fueled events. We’re given a front-row seat to witness the ways in which money and power can corrupt a man’s soul. Raised by his father and educated by way of bon mots like “Everything burns,” and “To be a king, you have to think like one. You have to do king shit,” Roman’s fall from grace is stunningly potent, and what makes it all the more fascinating is Roman’s own disconnect from himself and the way he blames Dante for everything. While true to a certain extent, there comes a point where Roman can’t blame anybody but himself but is pathologically incapable of it. Cosby’s turned out a brilliant and compelling character study here, bringing with it shades of Breaking Bad‘s Walter White and The Godfather‘s Michael Corleone. In some ways, I couldn’t help but imagine Roman bemoaning, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” as he throws yet another body into the crematorium.
For as rich as the character work is, Cosby goes the extra mile to ensure that the setting is equally vivid. Jefferson Run may be a fictional Virginia town, but it feels real. It’s seedy and run-down, with Carruthers Crematorium, a bar and seafood joint, and a weed dispensary among the few viable businesses left in an area run down by urban flight, economic despair, political corruption, the proliferation of drugs, murder, and gang violence. Jefferson Run is a character in its own right, and a stark reflection of Roman and what he can become. Cosby encapsulates the nature of Jefferson Run in a single sentence when he writes, “A light rain moved across the city like it was crying over the blood on its streets.” We come to know this city as intimately as we do Roman himself, and in doing so we know the rain won’t ever wash it clean, certainly not for long.
King of Ashes is among the few books that, upon reading through its very last page and absorbing its implications, I couldn’t help but breath out one single word: “Wow.” The tour through Jefferson Run, and through the mind and deeds of Roman, was messy, violent, complicated, and oh so satisfying. Story-wise, it was like sitting down for a five-course meal, and by book’s end I was positively stuffed. I ate good with this one, even if certain moments and character’s decisions were stomach-turning. Now… when’s the next book come out?
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