Last year, I read three of S.A. Cosby’s novels (I still need to read Blacktop Wasteland), and I was instantly hooked. When I heard about his latest book, King of Ashes, I knew I had to pick up a copy and read it right away. Like My Darkest Prayer, Razorblade Tears, and All the Sinners Bleed, King of Ashes didn’t disappoint. As I read, I kept recalling why Cosby’s works engages me so much. Cosby’s writing, amidst so much violence and blood, contains so much beauty, in the turns of phrases he uses and the metaphors he deploys. Describing the arrival of winter, Cosby writes, “It was as if Mother Nature herself were turning her back on them and giving Old Man Winter early entrance to the body of Gaia. Night, winter, and death were at the gates.” This image, coupled with allusions to Dante, the Ship of Theseus, Southern hip-hop, and so much more, keep bringing me to Cosby’s work because through these moves, we encounter much more than violence, sex, and intrigue.

While Cosby’s writing style keeps me interested, I also enjoy his work because of the violence, a sometimes over-the-top violence that reminds me, so much, of Quentin Tarantino’s work, specifically something like Reservoir Dogs. In fact, on the dust jacket, Cosby dons a Reservoir Dogs shirt depicting Mr. Blonde in the warehouse, leaning on a post as he sucks a drink through a straw and prepares to torture a police officer. Cosby imbues his novel with references to Tarantino, at one point comparing the guns someone holds to those that Jules and Vincent brandish in Pulp Fiction. People’s appendages get cut off, people ventilated by bullets, and people get burned alive in the crematorium. Yet, all of this serves as nothing more that hors d’oeuvres for what Cosby, like other great crime writers such as Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, and more does over the course of the novel. The main course of King of Ashes focuses on identity, trauma, intimacy, and familial bonds.

I could write about all of these themes, but I want to focus on a specific scene, early in the novel, where we see the theme of identity appear. Roman Carruthers works as a financial advisor in Atlanta, making his clients a lot of money and getting them out of trouble. When his sister calls him about their father being in a coma, he rushes home to Jefferson Run, Virigina, and gets involved in trying to help his brother Dante get out of some trouble he got himself into with local gangsters Torrent and Tranquil, the leaders of the Black Baron Boys. This all causes Roman to think about his “”life of shallow excess as a financial advisor,” contemplating his own view of himself and his identity.

After getting out of the shower, Roman gets dressed and looks at himself in the mirror. He put on his Rolex watch, which he “purchased secondhand through a jeweler who did work for some of his clients.” He also puts on his shirt, which he had “specially tailored to be shorter on the left arm so he could show off the twelve-thousand-dollar timepiece.” He does this things to present an air of sophistication, an air of wealth, an air of confidence. However, even though he enjoys extravagance, he also has “a frugality borne from the same fountain of wisodm his father drank from.” Roman puts on an act, a facade, that helps him mask the pain he feels about his mother’s death and to portray confidence to his clients.

As his father told him, “Everything burns.” Everything fades. The threads on a shirt start to unravel. Cars depreciate in value. Things such as the Rolex only become “as valuable as the market deemed it.” Roman realizes the facade he portrays, the false identity he presents to the world. The narrator states, “It was all a charade. An act, and the material things were a part of the costume.” It all served as armor, as protection. Even though his net worth topped a million dollars in the ledgers, he looks at himself as a man who “might as well be worth thirty thousand.” In the mirror, Roman confronts his real self, and he knows that what he presents, what he highlights, is not his “true” self.

Roman also perceives others in certain ways, particulary Torrent and Tranquil. When he sees them in the club for the first time, he sees them as nothing more than “wannabe players.” When the brothers enter the crematory, Roman sees that the “childish countenance” he saw on their faces in the club get smashed under the harsh lights of the crematory. He sees that “the dark roads they had walked and the terrible things they had seen were stamped on their faces like a brand.” Roman initially sees them as play gangstas, as individuals, like some of his clients, who had taken in the images of gangsters portrayed across media.

Roman had been “accustomed to the larger-than-life cartoon characters that passed themselves off as tough guys in sound booths in Atlanta.” These characters would create a persona, a facade, where they wove tales about “a life they had only observed from the edges.” They imagined reality, presenting it as reality, and getting millions of streams from “similarly false thugs who wanted to believe they were about that life.” Roman had been so used to these “false thugs” that her forgot that “real gangsters” existed, ones who saw killing someone as just a part of their job. Torrent and Tranquil are not “false thugs,” they are “monsters” who, as Roman thinks, “were eating him and his brother alive.”

Over the course of King of Ashes, Roman begins to come to terms with his identity. He uses the facade he has constructed to navigate his interactions with Torrent and Tranquil. He realizes that the constructed mask he wears merely hides his true self because even as he keeps telling himself he is nothing like Torrent and Tranquil, that he would never do the things that they do, he comes to recognize that he has done similar things and that he will continue to do them. Notably, he thinks about all of this when he asks his associate, Khalil, to come to Virginia and help him implement some of his plan.

Former military, Khalil works as security and plays other roles in Roman’s business. When Roman needs a strong arm, he asks Khalil to act. He keeps himself removed from Khalil’s actions, even if those actions include torture or murder. He believes that his removal from Khalil’s actions doesn’t implicate him in what happens; however, as the novel progresses, and as Khalil does actions for Roman in Virginia, Roman begins to realize that this disconnect doesn’t hold water because even if he didn’t actually commit the act, he endorsed the act, thus making himself culpable. Roman realizes his true self and that, while he tries to create a clear distinction between himself, Torrent, and Tranquil, he is more like them than he wants to admit.

We can argue that none of the characters in King of Ashes are redeemable, but we love them. Roman commits heinous acts, but we root for him. He admire him. We see his motivations, tied to familial loyalty and trauma. This is a masterstroke akin to Tarantino who, in his movies, does not have any characters that we would truly say is “good.” Yet, we cheer for Jules and Vincent.

For more, check out my interview with Cosby about All the Sinners Bleed, and go pick up King of Ashes. What are your thoughts? As usual, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Bluesky @silaslapham.bsky.social‬.