S.A. Cosby writes dark, gritty, rural crime fiction that is as unflinching and uncompromising as anything by Joe R. Lansdale or Andrew Vachss, as brutal and surprising as a sucker punch to the solar plexus. His novels are set for the most part in the part of southern Virginia that’s a universe away from the Washington D.C. corridors of power.

I read Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears, his previous two novels, back to back. Not something I normally do. So many books, so little time, and all that. The truth is, I couldn’t help myself. Here was an author in full control, writing crime fiction so exhiliarating, so harrowing, that I enthusiastically doubled up. His settings are authentic and captivating, his characters deeply flawed and fascinating, his plots propulsive.

The good news is, All the Sinners Bleed is more of the same, and just as good.

I’m only going to hit the highlights, as I’m not a big believer in book review spoilers. Titus Crown, the first and only black sheriff in deeply rural Charon County Virginia, finds himself embroiled in a case with more tentacles than Cthulhu, and those tentacles wrap themselves around the county and its denizens, squeezing tight. There’s a school shooting of a beloved teacher, multiple shocking discoveries, and numbing violence. The bodies pile up, threatening to bring Charon County down around Sheriff Crown’s broad shoulders.

Crown is a towering creation, a man at once brave and tenacious, yet haunted by his past and often overcome with self-doubt. Cosby’s other characters, including Crown’s father and brother, his current and former girlfriend, and the folks that work for him in the sheriff’s department, are complex and fully realized. They feel lived-in, if that makes sense, as if Cosby plucked them from the real world rather than creating them out of whole cloth.

Cosby is unsparing in his depiction of small town politics, deeply engrained Southern racism and bigotry, religion both comforting and caustic, and the inner workings of a small local police force under extraordinary stress. How each of these societal parts that make up Charon County are impacted by, and respond to, the all-consuming violence that descends upon them is what makes this novel so breathtaking. All The Sinners Bleed will sink its claws into you and refuse to let go.

Pick up All The Sinners Bleed today, and plan on reading right on through the night.