Blacktop Wasteland Spiral-Bound | 2021-06-01

S. A. Cosby

★★★★☆+

$19.19 - Free Shipping
A husband, a father, a son, a business owner…And the best getaway driver east of the Mississippi.

Beauregard “Bug” Montage is an honest mechanic, a loving husband, and a hard-working dad. Bug knows there’s no future in the man he used to be: known from the hills of North Carolina to the beaches of Florida as the best wheelman on the East Coast.

He thought he'd left all that behind him, but as his carefully built new life begins to crumble, he finds himself drawn inexorably back into a world of blood and bullets. When a smooth-talking former associate comes calling with a can't-miss jewelry store heist, Bug feels he has no choice but to get back in the driver's seat. And Bug is at his best where the scent of gasoline mixes with the smell of fear.

Haunted by the ghost of who he used to be and the father who disappeared when he needed him most, Bug must find a way to navigate this blacktop wasteland...or die trying.

Like Ocean’s Eleven meets Drive, with a Southern noir twist, S. A. Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland is a searing, operatic story of a man pushed to his limits by poverty, race, and his own former life of crime.

Publisher: Macmillan
Original Binding: Trade Paperback
Pages: 320 pages
ISBN-10: 1250252695
Item Weight: 0.6 lbs
Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches
"Sensationally good--new, fresh, real, authentic, twisty, with characters and dilemmas that will break your heart. More than recommended." --Lee Child

"Blacktop Wasteland is an urgent, timely, pitch-perfect jolt of American noir. S. A. Cosby is a welcome, refreshing new voice in crime literature." --Dennis Lehane, bestselling author of Since We Fell and Mystic River

"Diamonds and fast cars, trailer park dreams and late night illegal street racing, S. A. Cosby reinvents the American crime novel. Black and white with bills unpaid and no exit in sight, his characters feel the pull of family and swagger with the melancholy ache of wanting to be someone. Blacktop Wasteland thrums and races--it's an intoxicating thrill of a ride." --Walter Mosley, bestselling author of Trouble Is What I Do

"Cosby never misses a note in this high-energy read...A superb work of crime fiction, uncompromisingly noir but deeply human, too, much like Lou Berney's November Road (2018)." --Booklist, starred review

"High-octane neo-noir thriller…The gritty, brutal narrative is complemented by the author's sublime use of sensory description and regional imagery. In addition, the epic, jaw-dropping chase sequences that figure prominently are reason alone to read this pedal-to-the-metal but profoundly sorrowful novel. Cosby is definitely a writer to watch." --Publishers Weekly

"Buckle up. S. A. Cosby is about to take you on a high-speed spin through the rural black south. Muscle cars, backroads racing, double crossing deals and that elusive big score. Red Hill County is my kind of place!" --Ace Atkins, New York Timesbestselling author of The Revelators

"Blacktop Wasteland will let the world at large in on what the crime fiction underworld already knows: S. A. Cosby is a major, original talent. Searing, twisted and jaggedly human, this Southern noir heist novel leaves scars." --Jordan Harper, Edgar Award winning author of She Rides Shotgun

S. A. Cosby is a writer from Southeastern Virginia. He recently won an Anthony Award for Best Short Story. He resides in Gloucester, VA. When not writing he is an avid hiker and chess player.