King of Ashes

 As I've written before, SA Cosby has replaced Ken Bruen as the first crime author I read in a given year. That's probably going to slow down unless he's got another one coming out this year. (Shame on me for not checking.) So, instead of Jack Taylor, I get to read about a side of Virginia we never see. Set in fictional Jefferson City, Cosby establishes his setting as lying near the real city of Roanoke, in the southwestern part of the state. This region has little in common with the Tidewater, Chesapeake Bay, or the urban sprawl of Richmond and the DC suburbs. It has more in common with West Virginia, just on the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

We open with Roman Carruthers, a financial mogul in Atlanta who makes money magic happen for all manner of athlete, musician, and actor. We briefly see Roman in his element, living in Buckheads, approaching his craft like a science, and contracting the services of a dominatrix to relax him before a major meeting or decision. Like you do.

Then he gets a phone call. His father is in a coma after being hit by a train. Roman flies home after a five-year absence to help with the family business. A crematorium. His sister Neveah runs the shop with her father and is pretty much in charge when we meet her. Brother Danta...

Well, he's why Dad is in a coma. And then there's the matter of their mother, who disappeared. Their father caught her cheating. She disappeared. When the wife of a crematorium operator disappears, it's almost impossible to conclude what happened to her and why there is no body.

But the present situation, someone pushing the elder Carruthers' car into an oncoming freight train's path, ties back to Dante. By his own description, he is the family disappointment. So Roman sets about to fix this. Dante is in debt to some very bad characters named Torrent and Tagent, both sociopaths, and both ruling by fear. Roman works his way into their inner circle by offering to make them money instead of straight up paying Dante's debt. Things spiral from there.

Roman uses his talents both to bring in money for those Dante owes and to set Torrent and Tangent's people against each other and their enemies against them. Complicating matters is a woman Roman meets at a party: Jealousy. Jealousy, or Jae as she calls herself, works for the mayor. She's also Torrent and Tanget's sister. Roman falls for her, but he's out to kill her brothers. It's as messy as messy can be. 

Roman is, of course, the center of this mess. While trying to save his siblings, he becomes the reverse of The Wire's Stringer Bell. Where as Bell used his money to get out of the game and into respectability, Roman starts out respectable and spirals into the game. 

Over all, this is what Cosby does best. He mixes Southern life, race, poverty, and the disruption of crime into a mile-a-minute tale. The crematory makes for an interesting backdrop and a plot point in several threads. However, it doesn't quite live up to his masterpieces, Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears. But then not every Beatles album is Sgt. Pepper's or every Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon. Just as reaching for those bands off your streaming service still delivers great music, so does pulling SA Cosby from the shelf.