Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner * New York Times Notable Book * NPR’s Best Books of the Year * BookPage’s #1 Mystery and Suspense of the Year * Sun Sentinel’s #1 Best Mystery of the Year “I loved Blacktop Wasteland…[A] fast-paced, bareknuckle thriller.” -Stephen King “A roaring, full-throttle thriller, crackling with tension and charm.” -The New York Times Book Review “One of the year’s … with tension and charm.” –The New York Times Book Review
“One of the year’s strongest novels.” -Sun Sentinel
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.
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A first-rate crime thriller.
Fresh take on the thriller genre as a mechanic trying to leave his criminal past behind takes on another job to help his family with heart-pounding results.
I love when you can taste the grit in a book, and Blacktop Wasteland brings that on every page. Bug is a terrific main character with realistic motivations and a fully-fleshed feel to him. he’s a family man willing to get down and dirty to keep treading water and maybe earn a little extra. Love it. The action is intense, particularly when it comes to the main draw, the car scenes, and the cast of characters is wild and varied. Can’t wait to read more from S. A. Cosby.
Excellent pacing throughout the book. Edgy. I read enough chick lit. that I thought I would give this a try since I am reading more during the pandemic. Definitely a guy book, complete with muscle car. It gave a window to black culture and a peek at why good at heart people sometimes do terrible things. Would read this author again. The pacing earned the 5th star.
Beauregard “Bug” Montage, who used to be known as the best getaway driver on the east coast, has since given up that life for his wife and kids and honest business. But when several situations converge at once to put him in financial constraints that could keep him from providing for his family, he agrees to take one last job. The jewelry store heist, which seems like a safe enough bet, soon goes south, putting everything Bug holds dear on the line. This book is gripping, heart-pounding, surprising, and immensely moving. At the center of the story is Bug’s struggle to decide what kind of man he wants to be, or what kind of man it’s in his DNA to be. And even though most people reading this book will have never been in the exact situation Bug finds himself in, that core question of identity—and of what you’re willing to do when your back is against the wall—is one that will resonate with many readers. SA Cosby beautifully depicts Bug’s family dynamics, which made the threat to his family even more impactful. The writing is filled with inventive similes and spare but lovely turns of phrase, and the driving scenes are explosive and exciting (even for someone like me who cares nothing of cars or fast driving). I flew through this book in just a couple days; it’s definitely a 2020 standout.
Very good crime fiction. Quirky and fun and more than few twists and turns.
Admittedly a fan of dark books, this one fits the bill. The story is haunting in so many ways, but a beautiful picture of the struggle between who a man is and who he might have been. The characters are developed exactly as they need to be and somehow, in the end, I ended up feeling empathy and love for bad actors.
Fast and furious in book form
Wow, this is a gritty, raw novel about a black man, Beauregard/Bug, who is trying to be a good husband and father. He has 2 sons with his wife Kia, and a daughter from a previous relationship. Beauregard owns a garage, but it has fallen on hard times because another auto shop has moved into the area and has taken a lot of business from Beauregard. With his mother in a nursing home with mounting bills, and the garage business suffering, Beauregard has a lot of debt. Beauregard’s father abandoned his family when Beauregard was a young boy. But, Beauregard still looks up to his father as a hero although he wasn’t one. Beauregard hangs on to his father’s Duster as a tribute to his dad, using it to hustle people by drag racing them.
When 2 white guys, Ronnie and Reggie, offer Beauregard an opportunity to score a large sum of money by robbing a jewelry store, Beauregard agrees to do it in order to pay off his debts. This act triggers a series of other events taking Beauregard and his family down a very dark hole. Beauregard has to evaluate his life and his decisions as a result.
This is a novel packed full of emotion. It makes you think about the choices you make, how those choices affect others, and the lengths you will go to in order to protect your family.
#BlacktopWasteland #SACosby
Highly recommend this fantastic read.
Grabs from the first page and just keeps going. Action, great characters, and almost redemption.
Beauregard “Bug” Montage is a man at war with himself, torn between the loving, hard working, law-abiding husband and father he wants to be and the high-octane outlaw he’s trying not to be any longer.
Bad habits, bad company and bad luck die hard, though. So do hard times. And Bug, known as the best wheelman east of the Mississippi by hard cases who value this criminal specialty, seems damned to return to the crooked path his long-gone father showed him when he was a youngster.
He’s haunted by that man, a Smilin’ Jack hustler who passed his speed demon and mechanical skills to his son, along with a deceptively ugly Plymouth Duster that’s both a shrine to the missing elder and one beast of a street machine.
That Duster — and his father’s ghost — puts Bug back on the wrong path when he bets all the cash he can scrape together on a back road drag race with a loudmouth braggart in an Olds Cutlass with a bum valve. It’s Bug’s bid to get out of the financial hole his failing auto repair shop has put him in and it looks like he’ll succeed when his Duster easily beats the Olds.
Bad luck has other plans. Turns out the braggart is in cahoots with some good ol’ boys who pose as cops and rip off all the money they can find on the dragsters, including Bug’s winnings. Bug sniffs out the scam, tails the braggart to the nearest bar, beats him to within an inch of his life, but gets back a little over half of what he bet — and none of what he won.
This pushes Bug into an unforgiving corner with only one exit — the path of his father, one he had barreled down for years before vowing to his wife Kia to become a righteous working stiff.
Bad company shows up in the form of Ronnie and his dim-witted brother, two trailer-trash rednecks with no redeeming qualities. They dangle a diamond heist at a jewelry store in a nearby town — a cache of untraceable stones, probably hot, stashed in a back room that nobody is supposed to know about.
Bug doesn’t trust Ronnie as far as he can throw him. But he’s desperate for money and lowers his standards of criminal conduct to work with people he despises to score a fat payday. With Bug waiting behind the wheel, Ronnie and a partner hit the jewelry store. The partner is stoned and botches the one job he had to do — keep an eye on customers and clerks while Ronnie grabs the stones. Gunfire breaks out. A citizen gets dead.
But thanks to Bug’s wizardry with the wheel, the crew escapes. Bug’s cut is big enough to pay all his creditors, including the owner of the nursing home where his evil-tongued mother lives, and keep his garage open.
Bad luck shows up again in the form of an up-holler crime boss who owns the stones and was using them as a means to launder dirty cash. They want their money back and are quickly on the trail of Bug, Ronnie and his hapless partner.
This brief sketch of the author’s storyline really doesn’t do it justice because Cosby is a master at keeping the action fast-paced and bringing to life a weary and desiccated landscape of trailer parks, withered small towns, abandoned farms and trash-heaped countryside. And the worn-out and desperate folks, black and white, who live there.
His work has been lauded as being part of a rising wave of rural noir novels. Maybe so. What’s silver dollar real and dead certain, though, is Cosby knows how to tell a rip-roaring tale with lots of violence, betrayal, sex and plot twists.
In this book, Cosby shows his deftness at careening the story from one cliff-hanger to the next, all with the odds stacked against Bug, a resourceful, determined and hard-to-kill hombre you learn not to bet against. A helluva lot more people get dead, including Bug’s best friend. But Bug, battered and bloody, is unsinkable.
And without being the least bit preachy, he gives his story some moral backbone by showing Bug’s torment — his struggle with wicked ways and righteousness. That brings to mind Samuel L. Jackson’s scene as Jules, the hitman who has seen the light, near the end of Pulp Fiction: “The truth is, you’re the weak and I’m the tyranny of evil men. But I’m trying, Ringo, I’m trying real hard to be the shepherd.”
Buy this book. You’ll smell the burned rubber and exhaust fumes as soon as you crack open the cover.
Loved this book. I’ll read it again.
Blacktop wasteland is a winner and not only a winner but a tremendous literary novel that combines entertainment with sophistication. And all of this is set against a southern style atmosphere reminiscent of Daniel Woodrell and others of his ilk. Bug, our protagonist, owns a failing auto repair business in an economically depressed town. He decides to return to a life of crime, something he swore he would never do. Bug is a superlative get-a-way driver but also a good man. It is this struggle that when examined that makes Blacktop Wasteland an intriguing read. It is a rarity when an author combines thrills with literary acumen. Such is the talent of Mr. Crosby, an author to be followed with care.
Sensational, gritty, and fast-paced crime thriller that begs to be made into a movie.
Beauregard “Bug” Montage is trying to go straight. He is a loving husband and father and just opened his own garage. But he’s also the best wheelman in the South – if not the world – and the thrill of driving the getaway car is never far away. As his bills pile up and his world begins to crumble, can Bug resist the fatal lure of one last big job?
This is a fantastic book – harsh, cinematic, and suspenseful. Bug’s duality is well-developed, and the struggle between his warring sides is raw and compelling. The chase scenes are very exciting, and the dialogue and descriptions are fresh and immediate:
“You gotta drive like don’t nothing else matter except getting to that line. Drive like you __ing stole it.”
One of the best books I’ve read all year. Highly recommended.
CW: R-rated profanity, racial slurs, violence, and sexual activity.
Many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Does a son have to repeat his father’s transgressions and life choices?
It seemed like S.A. Cosby was trying to answer that question in his thrilling third novel, Blacktop Wasteland. I have seen this novel posted on my Instagram feed recently and several Goodreads friends posted about the book and I had to read it.
Beauregard “Bug” Montage is an excellent mechanic, devoted husband and father. He has tried to leave the life of street racing and crime behind. However, his auto mechanic shop direly needs business and Bug’s resources have hit the breaking point. He takes part in one more robbery to steal diamonds from a local jewelry store. In his desperate situation, Bug sees this opportunity as his only way out. However, easy money never comes easily and Bug learns the painful lesson that a life of crime never solves your problems.
Bug reconnects with a former associate that tells him the robbery of a jewelry store will be quick, easy, and foolproof. Of course, nothing is foolproof, and the heist gets the attention of a local criminal kingpin and Bug may have crossed paths with the wrong person. Bug’s family is pulled into his last excursion of crime and it nearly costs him everything. He hatches a plan to save his family and gets revenge on everyone that pulled him back into that life.
It has been a long time since I read a book that gave me holy s-word moments. Cosby’s fast-paced “southern noir” thriller kept me turning pages and got me invested in Bug’s journey out of darkness. Also, I appreciated how he brought up Bug’s connection to his father and how dangerous idolatry can become.
Blacktop Wasteland joins my favorite reads list of 2021 and Cosby’s visceral writing had me seeing Ving Rhames or Don Cheadle as Beauregard “Bug” Montage in a movie adapted from the novel. I’m looking forward to reading more of Cosby’s work and highly recommend this powerful, ultraviolent novel.
By turning his attention to one of the best-drawn characters of writing his career, S.A. Cosby delivers arguably one of the best crime noirs put out last year.
This is the first book I have read by Mr. Cosby and it will not be my last.
This story takes you on the journey of Beauregard, a man who is trying to do right by his family. He was headed down the wrong path in life when he righted himself. Opened an autobody repair shop. Like, the “common” working man, he found himself in a heap of financial trouble. He found himself making the wrong decisions for the right reasons.
This is a book that we all can relate to, finding ourselves strapped with finances that are seemingly unmanageable. Some of us, like Beauregard, make the wrong decisions for the right reasons. There is a lot of truth in this book. Just reading it, you can tell it comes from a place of knowledge, a place of heart. This is definitely going back on my shelf to read again.
I typically devour books, but with this one, I paced myself, reluctantly putting it down each time after just a few chapters. This required a measure of self-discipline that I ordinarily do not possess — and, make no mistake, there’s nothing about this book that made it easy to do so. Shawn Cosby has crafted a tale that simultaneously makes your heart race and your soul ache. Beauregard (“Bug”) Montage’s story of love, ambition, regrets, despair, and an anguished hope for redemption will suck you right in and threaten to never let you go. If there’s to be a sequel, I will be first in line to buy it.
An amazing joyride of a book. I loved the way Cosby builds up the main character of Bug. The descriptions interwoven in the book are both gritty and poetic.
Cosby is able to really shine a light on the intertangled nuances found across various relationships—with family, friends, and enemies. I’m especially in awe of how he depicts the father and son relationships in this book.
A gripping race of a book that also offers a complex portrait of one man’s attempt to balance passion, crime, and family.