Razorblade Tearsby S. A. Cosby

“Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid. The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah’s white husband, Derek.

Ike had never fully accepted his son but is devastated by his loss. Derek’s father Buddy Lee was almost as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed of his father’s criminal record. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though, and he wants to know who killed his boy.

Ike and Buddy Lee, two ex-cons with little else in common other than a criminal past and a love for their dead sons, band together in their desperate desire for revenge. In their quest to do better for their sons in death than they did in life, hardened men Ike and Buddy Lee will confront their own prejudices about their sons and each other, as they rain down vengeance upon those who hurt their boys.

Provocative and fast-paced, S. A. Cosby’s Razorblade Tears is a story of bloody retribution, heartfelt change – and maybe even redemption.”

One of the summer’s most hotly anticipated releases, Razorblade Tears is author S. A. Cosby’s thoroughly triumphant follow-up to last year’s Blacktop Wasteland, which racked up an impressive list of awards and accolades, including: Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner • New York Times Notable Book • NPR’s Best Books of 2020 • BookPage’s #1 Mystery and Suspense of 2020 • Sun Sentinel’s #1 Best Mystery of 2020.

Already making its own mark, Razorblade Tears has earned starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, BookPage and Library Journal, as well as praise from the likes of Michael Connelly (“No doubt, S. A. Cosby is not only the future of crime fiction but of any fiction where the words are strong, the characters are strong and the story has a resonance that cuts right to the heart of the most important questions of our times.”), the New York Times Book Review (“Cosby’s prose is vibrant and inventive, his action exuberant and relentless…You may come for the setup, but you’ll stay for the storytelling. Cosby writes in a spirit of generous abundance and gleeful abandon…More important, the book moves. It thrums. Razorblade Tears practically taunts you every time you try to put it down.”), Ian Rankin (“The very definition of a white-knuckle ride…don’t know when I last read such a bruising book about bruised people.”), and the Washington Post (“Elmore Leonard, wherever you are, you’ve got competition…S.A. Cosby has reappeared as one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction.”), among others.

Razorblade Tears is available now from Flatiron Books (ISBN: 978-1250252708).

S. A. Cosby is an Anthony Award-winning writer from Southeastern Virginia. He is the bestselling author of Blacktop Wasteland, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was a New York Times Notable Book, the Sun Sentinel’s and BookPage’s #1 Best Mystery of the year, a Goodreads Choice Awards Semifinalist, and was named a best of the year by NPR, The Guardian, and Library Journal, among others.