Title: Razorblade Tears
Rating: 4 Stars
Having read Cosby’s last novel, Blacktop Wasteland, I was looking forward to reading his latest. It was quite the ride.
The story shifts between Ike’s and Buddy Lee’s perspectives. Ike is a former gang member that at one time had a wild reputation as Riot Randolph. Having spent many years in a penitentiary, he comes out determined to made a new start for himself. Twelve years later, he is running a successful landscaping business and put all thoughts of violence behind him.
Buddy Lee Jenkins is also an ex-con. His post prison life hasn’t been as successful. Living in a grungy double wide, he lives a life pretty close to poverty. Even so, he has good Southern boy charm and apparently looks like Sam Elliott gone to seed.
Their lives cross paths when their two sons, the only children of both, fall in love with each other and marry. Both men, products of their hard bitten environment, are horrified that their sons are gay and nearly cut them out of their lives due to their respective homophobia.
Their lives change forever when both of their sons are murdered, execution style. Frustrated by the inaction and disinterest of the police, they become enraged when someone desecrates their son’s graves. Galvanized to action, they both vow to avenge their son’s deaths, regardless of the cost. This kicks off a plot drenched in death, violence, and mayhem.
In case it’s not apparent, Ike is Black and Buddy Lee is white. Even though their sons were married, they essentially had no prior relationship. So, just like Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in The Defiant Ones playing two men chained together that have to work out their racial differences as they try to escape and survive, Ike and Buddy Lee are also chained together. Instead of a literal chain, their figurative chain is their shared grief of their sons, murderous desire for vengeance, and shame of how they’ve failed their sons.
Together they work the case. They are both able to reach back into their respective past lives to gain information and material that moves the case forward. They discover that a woman named Tangerine is somehow behind the reason that their sons were killed. In their search for Tangerine, they come across a murderous biker gang determined to kill them, a famous rapper, and the local criminal king pen. All of the while, they are both taking and inflicting damage. Will they be able to avenge their sons’ deaths or will the biker gang track them down and kill them first? Will they somehow find a way to assuage the deep guilt that they both feel?
As in all mismatched buddy movies, they start off antagonizing each other, and then over time, begin to appreciate the other’s point of view. Even as the mayhem reaches fever pitch, their unlikely friendship deepens.
There are a couple of problems with the novel. As I’ve said in previous plots, I’m not actually all that good about predicting plot twists, so I’m usually pleasantly surprised as the plot unfolds. Here, the plot points are pretty well telegraphed. There are three main twists to the plot. At least to me, all of them were pretty obvious, almost from the outset. Missing that surprise took away some of the enjoyment of reading the book.
I give Cosby credit for, in what is basically a genre action novel, to make race and LGBTQ issues so paramount. My only issue was the lack of subtlety in doing so. I just felt that much of this discussion seemed to take the form of exposition as opposed to natural dialog. If it wasn’t in the form of exposition, it seemed to also occasionally take the form of simplistic trite dialog. Some of it seemed crowbarred into the novel instead of naturally flowing discourse.
Finally, by the end of book, Ike is basically a Terminator. Granted, twelve years ago, he was a hardened murderous criminal, but now he’s capable of effortlessly using any weapon that he has on hand, brutalizing all comers in hand to hand combat, and can create a perfectly timed bomb. The problem with any novel that has over the top violence is how do you keep your protagonist human? Here, I’d argue that Cosby fails. Ike truly becomes an immortal killing machine. He might as well be an Avenger.
Anyway, that’s what’s keeping it from 5 stars. However, it is a compulsively readable, fast paced novel. Even with its warts, I applaud the diversity of views that it brings forth and am looking forward to his next novel.
dorkenstein 