Blacktop Wasteland

by S.A. Cosby
Book review by Meredith McKinnie

“A mistake is a lesson, unless you make the same mistake twice.”

Cosby’s crime novel is an adrenaline-pumping, high-speed thriller that keeps readers gripping their seats with one hand while furiously turning pages with the other. The action starts in the first few pages and never lets up. Beauregard “Bug” Montagne has a reputation as a heist getaway driver, but he left his criminal life behind fifteen years ago. Now he is a family man with his own automotive shop, trying to live by the advice of his better angels. When financial times get tough, he reluctantly considers returning to the life he once owned, assuring himself and his family that this time will be the last. 

Cosby writes action with the warp speed and accuracy of a summer blockbuster hit. But whereas many of those movies lack significant character development and timely themes, Cosby manages to achieve both. He writes complex characters, who are not stationed in simply good or bad corners, but rather straddle both. His themes of loss, lineage, and broken systems resonate with the experience of many Americans living on the edge of poverty or even the cusp of prosperity, not quite sure where they fit or if they even belong. Bug is trying to decide who he is, and whether he can escape who he’s meant to be. His father’s legacy as a man who chose a life of crime over his family haunts Bug, and he is determined to break the cycle. But when he sees the impact of his past on his own son, he fears trying to be different may not quite be enough. 

Bug is the criminal readers root for, doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. Blacktop Wasteland is escapism, in the purest form. Riding shotgun alongside Bug during a heist is not a safe place to be, but Cosby places each reader in the front seat for the thrill ride. Cosby also explores the generational aspect of poverty, and how it intersects with identity. The characters don’t deny who they are, and they aren’t necessarily proud of what they do. They just don’t foresee any other viable option. As a black man, Bug acknowledges the limitations, insisting “when you’re a black man in America, you live with the weight of people’s low expectations on your back every day.” He is trying to defy the stereotype yet forced into playing by the rules of a system he resents. Cosby’s novel is the literary summer hit you never saw coming.