Spoiler Free Review of King of Ashes

One day Roman, a slick talking financial whiz from ATL gets a call from his estranged sister that he needs to come home. Their father has been in an accident and is in a coma. Rome wraps up business and heads back to his hometown of Jefferson Run, Virginia, and when he arrives he learns that there was more to his father’s accident that meets the eye.

In King of Ashes, Cosby deftly employs the typical crime fiction tropes (crooked cops, drugs, bang bang blow blow shootouts), but what really hooked me in was the setting. In the book marketing world the word “southern noir” has been popularized as of late, and while I’m usually skeptical of trends disguised as micro-genres, the phrase fits. The people, the topics of conversation, and cultural references are deeply enmeshed with the politics of the place. Though Jefferson Run is fictional, it feels as real as any small, neglected black town in America. Crooked politicians, community divestment, family squabbles over money. Jefferson Run is…