Blacktop Wasteland by SA Cosby

The location: 

South central Virginia. Maybe 1.5hr north of Winston-Salem

The players: 

Beauregard (Bug) Montage and wife Kia. A high school age daughter and 2 boys on the verge of puberty. Cousin Kelvin. Bug and Kelvin own a car repair shop in Red Hill, VA. Losing some money since someone opened a Prestige Car Care franchise. Boonie is Bug's surrogate father. Runs an auto salvage yard and has been known to turn his back when someone needs to borrow his car crusher.

Ronnie and Reggie Sessions. Poster children for the concept of 'poor white trash.' Ronnie always seems to have a plan to hit it big so he can head for highways that end at a beach side Tiki bar and all the umbrella drinks he can stand. Reggie follows whatever Ronnie plans.

Lazarus (Lazy for short) is a regional bad guy who runs women, drugs, weapons, drugs and anything else that'll turn a profit. Shade is Lazy's prime competition. Shade is based in NC and wants to expand to VA. Lazy will do anything to keep that from happening. Neither one is to be underestimated. 

Now you have the players. The book opens at a street race in SW Virginia. Bug has his daddy's old Duster. He and Reggie are looking to race for some serious cash. Bug needs money. The mortgage on his garage is overdue. His mom's nursing home want's to toss the old battleax for non-payment after Medicaid cut her off. His daughter has been accepted to VCU and he needs tuition money. His two boys need either glasses or braces. Bug really needs the money.

He wins the race. After the race, his opponent sets Bug up with some phony cops and a roadside heist. Bug manages to leave with some money, but far less than he'd hoped for. 

Ronnie Sessions comes to Bug with a sure thing. A girl he knows works in a jewelry store in Newport News. Her boss lets it out that about $1.5 million in loose diamonds is coming to the store. He and brother Reggie and maybe one other guy will hold up the store. All Bug has to do is drive because Bug's rep is that he is the best wheelman on the east coast. Once they get the stones, Ronnie's DC-based fence will buy the gems. Bug's take on a 4-way cut will cover his immediate money needs.

Reluctantly, Bug agrees, much to Kia's chagrin. The heist goes down, but not without some gun play. A jewelry store gets robbed, the cops may show a little interest. But a dead patron? The cops will be coming hard. Ronnie fences the stones, Bug gets his cut. Pays down on all that debt with a little left over. 

Here's where Lazy comes into play. He owned that store. It was a middle stop in processing stolen money and precious stones. And he ain't happy. Not one bit. The store manager winds up dead. Ronnie's girl in MIA. Ronnie's been seen throwing some money around, exactly what Bug said not to do. 

Lazy's guys close in on Bug's family. Not smart. But Lazy sees a way to take care of Bug's debt to Lazy from the theft and a way to bust Shade. Lazy has a guy on the inside of Shade's operation. A truck loaded with contraband platinum in coming through to Shade. If Bug will hijack it, Lazy will forget about the jewelry store. 

Sounds simple enough, right? But the east coast's best wheelman has his own plans and wants to bust up not just Lazy but Shade, too. Clean up that section of the middle Atlantic. 

If one had to ask about the book's overall theme, it's probably something to do with the duality of man. His personal yin and yang. The good and the evil. As Bug says, "I used to think of myself as two people. I was Bug with his Duster sometimes and Beauregard with his wife and kids, ran a business, went to school plays. Bug . . . he robbed banks and armored cars, drove 100 mph on hairpin curves, threw people who killed those he loved into a car crusher. But you can't be two types of beasts. Eventually, one of the beasts gets loose and wrecks shop." And the book is about how well, or how poorly, Beauregard or Bug keeps the other beast at bay. What Bug's family has to go through may have you levitating off your chair.

Whether it's his Duster, a wrecker, a beat up panel truck, caddy, or some junker Boonie found, Bug will push Beauregard to the background when he gets behind the wheel of a car, because that's were it all makes sense. And when a car won't do, his .45 will because "you can't argue with a .45."

Cosby is an Anthony Award winning author with around a half dozen books to his credit. Too bad my county library has only this title; the purchasing dept is staffed by idiots. I will find the others. Count on it. This book is drop dead spectacular. Stellar writing, stellar plotting, and stellar character development. I haven't been this enamored with a new (to me) author since stumbling across Brian Panowich and his Bull Mountain trilogy. This is Southern Noir of the first order. No joke and no hyperbole. A great book by a great writer. Found an interview with Cosby and he said that Hollywood has been sniffing around. This would be a spectacular movie or limited series. The book is so well written that you practically see the storyboards in your mind's eye while reading. In that interview, some delusional critic complained that Cosby used too many similes. I've never heard such a foolish statement. The similes are what make this book come to life. While reading, I thought Cosby combines the talents of two power rotation authors: George Pelacanos, for the gritty dialogue, and Brian Panowich, for his ability to stage the southern scene. For me, putting Cosby up there with Pelacanos and Panowich is running in some high cotton.

Get this book. You won't be disappointed. You'll tear through it just like I did. The way Bug's daddy taught him how to drive: 

"Drive it like you stole it."

East Coast Don

The Dirty South by John Connolly

Before we get started. This is by JOHN Connelly, whose main character is the former NYPD detective Charlie Parker. It is not by MICHAEL Connelly, whose main character is Harry Bosch (and Mickey Haller, aka The Lincoln Lawyer). Both write crime novels. But they couldn’t be more different.

John Connelly has written 17 prior Charlie Parker novels, a couple of which have been reviewed here on MRB. This one differs a bit as it helps establish Parker’s backstory. Parker had been an NYPD detective. Toward the end of his time on the force, a suspicious murder went down, and Parker may or may not have been involved. But the real force behind who Parker is and would become is that his wife and daughter were murdered. Make that slaughtered. He fell apart after that, quit the force, and began his hunt for the killer. With the help of an FBI agent friend, Parker would look into murders across the US with roughly the same MO.

Which brings him to Burdon County Arkansas late in Bill Clinton’s 2^nd term in office. A third teenage girl has suffered what appears to be a ritualistic death. The first one happened about 15yr ago. The second happened a month before the third. The victims appear to have been tortured and their bodies mutilated with tree limbs crammed into various orifices.

Cargill is a nothing city buried deep within a nothing county in a forgotten corner of a state that competes with Mississippi to be the bottom of any 'best of' list of the US. The Cargill chief of police, Evan Griffin, is an Arkansas native and deals with drunks, some property crime, meth cookers, and traffic issues. A serial killer is out of his league. One evening in a local diner, he spots a stranger, Parker, and hassles him to the point where Griffin thinks a night in the slammer might improve Parker’s attitude. Next morning they check him out. What they learn earns a quick release and an apology.

Parker is curious about the murders. Griffin brings his up to speed and asks for help that Parker grudgingly agrees. Two issues underlay most everything in Cargill. First, the county is pretty much run by the Cade family. Has been for decades. The patriarch is Pappy and his three children make sure the county is run according to their wishes. His daughter Delphia lives in Little Rock to keep tabs on the legislature. Jurel is the Chief Investigator for the Burdon County Sheriff’s office. Nealus stays local to manage off of Pappy’s interests in Cargill. Nothing happens in Burdon County without Pappy’s blessing.

Second is that the county is dirt poor. Dirt poor may be a disservice to ‘dirt’. What that means is that land is plentiful and cheap. Now if some industry could be successfully courted to locate in Burdon County, that’d mean millions to the Cade family in land sales and more millions in money to the county what with construction costs, operational expenses, and the tax base. A company that deals in high tech for the military has narrowed its search for a new plant to Burdon County and somewhere in Texas. And Pappy Cade is going to make sure they choose Cargill.

The problem is whether they’ll choose Cargill what with at least two (and maybe a third if the initial death is included) unsolved murders of teenage girls. Pappy thinks law enforcement should put the investigation on the back burner until the papers are signed. And with son Jurel in the sheriff’s office, that should be easy. But the last killing was in the Cargill police jurisdiction and Chief Griffin stands his ground to lead the investigation.

The investigation pings all over the county from horny bar owners to crystal meth cookers to good ol’ boys dipping their wick in the local teenagers to local hookers and politics at the State level. Someone sure seems bent on making sure that the techies will use the killings as a reason to choose Texas for their new facilities.

Connelly paints a dead and dying corner of Arkansas to be a loathsome and worthless corner of the world. The locals are mostly ignorant and racist pigs who proudly wear their attitudes on their collective sleeves. Only the Cargill cops and the night clerk at a motel are deserving of our sympathies. The Cade family meets every stereotype of the southern control freaks who believe everyone in the county is there to meet their needs. A wretched clan they are.

If I had one hesitation, it’s this (and it's minor, believe me). John Connelly was born in Dublin and has won nearly every fiction prize out there. One thing sets UK authors apart from American authors. UK authors sure seem to have a greater command of the language, meaning a broader vocabulary. It was a good thing I was reading this on a Kindle so that I could select any number of words for its definition. Happened nearly every chapter. And that command of the language is visible in the dialogue. As such, I found it a little odd that some yahoo from rural off the map Arkansas might ask, ‘what gives you a proprietorial interest in developments?’ But making county bumpkins sound more educated shouldn’t deter anyone from picking up this (or any) book by John Connolly. It is what it is. It’s about the story. It’s about Parker wrestling with his demons that control his guilt while trying to help a fellow officer in need of his skills. And in this book, we see how Parker perfects his hunting skills.

And guess what, boys and girls? This is another Emily Bestler Books product so you know it’ll be absolutely first rate. Pay attention to those publishers. I’ve yet to go wrong with books from Emily Bestler Books.

A tip of the hat to NetGalley for the advance reviewer copy. Release date is October 20, 2021.

ECD

Enemy at the Gates by Vince Flynn and Kyle Mills

The nice thing about the Mitch Rapp series is that each successive book shows Mitch aging. Mellowing out a bit. More focused on his friends and family and less on wiping out America’s enemies. The underlying theme of Enemy is protecting his family and getting back to them. He has fortified living arrangements in Virginia and in South Africa where he spends most of his time these days.

It’s finally happened. This first trillionaire. Nicholas Ward. Made billions across multiple disciplines like tech, communications, transportation, pharma. You name it. His fingerprints can be found all over the place. Now he is focused on improving global humanity. He is financially supporting Dr. David Chism in his search for the holy grail of medicine – an antiviral that can be used to treat and prevent most every viral bug on the planet from COVID right down to the common cold.

And Chism is getting close. So close that people whose livelihood is based on treating sick people would like to delay his research. Many of the raw materials that Chism needs are in the Ugandan jungles. But that has good and bad points. Uganda is good because that kind of isolation is good for his research. It’s not so good in that a local terrorist with a god complex, Gideon Auma, has been trying to start his vision of a unified Africa (of course under his leadership) by starting a war between Uganda and its neighbor to the west, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Any terrorist worth his salt needs money. And through a complicated set of channels, Auma has been hired to kidnap Chism. A raid on the research compound nearly wipes out the research effort, but that can all be rebuilt. Chism as a hostage should bring a handsome payment from Nicholas Ward. But Chism and a couple colleagues escaped into the jungle and have yet to be found.

Because both Chism and Ward are Americans, the CIA and the White House are concerned. The new President, Anthony Cook, is one part dreamer and one part a pragmatist. He dreams of a gentler world but realizes the necessity of people like Ward who can get things done that a government can’t. He also realizes that much of the big money that got him to the White House will be severely damaged if Chism/Ward find that miracle anti-viral. He also isn’t a fan of the over-the-top methods of diplomacy that Mitch Rapp practices.

It becomes apparent that the raid on the research facility was a bit more organized. When one of Irene Kennedy’s IT nerds spots an internal breach of the CIA’s background information about Nicholas Ward, it starts to look like there is a mole within the CIA that is feeding info to outsiders that manages to reach Auma. Ergo, a well-planned and mostly successful assault on a reasonably well fortified compound.

Director Kennedy puts a really off the books plan in play. She brings Mitch (and his team of contractors) out of domestic malaise. Their job: find Chism. Use Ward (and his money) to restart the research facility, and put Auma’s army out of business. Oh, and conduct a mole hunt within the Langley headquarters from the jungles of Uganda all the while keeping the President out of the loop.

I’ve said it in earlier reviews. Kyle Mills has expertly picked up the Mitch Rapp saga following Vince Flynn’s passing a few years ago. Kudos to Simon and Schuster and Emily Bestler Books for bring Mills aboard. This story shows two sides of Rapp. His domestic side with his wife and stepdaughter at home in Virginia and South Africa (his wife’s home country). We also see the devastation he can reign down on enemies that don’t have America’s best interests at heart. And we see his cunning as he closes the net on the mole within the CIA. Hard to find any weaknesses in Mills presentation of another Mitch Rapp winner.

Thanks to the good folks at Simon and Schuster for the advance reviewer copy. Always a thrill when a package arrives with their return address. And like I’ve said over and over on this blog. Look to see who publishes a book. Of all the books I’ve read from Emily Bestler Books, each has been a winner.

Enemy at the Gates goes on sale September 14, 2021. Line up, folks.

The Good Detective

It was just a month ago that I wrote a very favorable review of John McMahon's third book with the protagonist, P.T. Marsh, "A Good Kill." After reading his third book, I promised to get to the first two books in the near future, so this is a review of the first novel, "The Good Detective." It was a year early that Marsh's wife and son were killed in an apparent car accident, and since then, he had lost himself to grief and alcohol. This is a very dark, ugly, and violent story about racism in the deep south.

        Marsh is the star detective in rural Mason Falls, Georgia. After his painful losses, there were those who still loved Marsh and were waiting for the real Marsh to surface again. His rookie partner, Remy Morgan, was one such person. Marsh and Morgan found the body of a teenage black boy who had been burned and hung. But Marsh had to shake off the effects of booze and grief if he was going to make sense of this matter, but there were sold old money forces that would prefer to continue in his drunken and dysfunctional ways. 

This book is about Marsh's recovery in the face of some very dark secrets. McMahon has not let me down. You don't need any more information dive into this story. Just for the background of the recurring characters and character development, I encourage  you to start with this novel. I'll get to McMahon's second novel in the near future.

 

Primordial

The Opioid Epidemic: What You Don't Know Will Destroy Your Family and Your Life!

Deciduous