All the Sinners (2023)
By S. A. Crosby
Flatiron Books, 352 pages
★★★★
You could label the new novel from Shawn Andre Crosby “rednecks and black folks.” Titus Crowne is the black sheriff of the strangely named town of Charon, Virginia. Who on earth would honor a town for the ancient Greek ferrymen who took souls to Hades for judgment? Titus was once an FBI agent in Indiana traumatized by an unfortunate event during a raid. He decided to quit the Agency and return to his hometown. Much to the chagrin of town councilor Scott Cunningham and other white elites, Titus got elected sheriff.
Titus lives with his widowed father, has a girlfriend named Darlene, and a brother Marquise who is semi-estranged from the family. Crowne’s baptism of fire takes place when popular teacher Jeff Spearman is gunned down in the local school. Titus almost convinced gunman Latrelle Macdonald to surrender, but a sudden move leads two deputies to fatally shoot him.
This is the proverbial tip of the iceberg of Titus’s challenges. He finds shocking pictures on Latrelle's phone, not the least of which is that both he and Spearman were photographed wearing raised wolf masks, but a third person kept his lowered and could not be identified. Who is the so-called “Lone Wolf” who is key to both the shooting and other dark mysteries? Sheriff Crowe also stumbles upon patterns of grizzly deaths to young black kids who are buried under a willow tree on Tank Phillips’ land. Each has been tortured and clues such as “Cursed by Cain” are found. Soon, the Lone Wolf will be in frequent contact to taunt Titus.
Charon is a religious town–even Titus's father Albert is a believer–but Titus sees veneer, not faith. He observes a Virginia county in which crack, fentanyl, crystal meth, and racism are like so many items in the Dollar General Store. Titus remarks to Charlene, one of his deputies, “Flannery O'Connor said the South is Christ-haunted. It's haunted all right. By the hypocrisy of Christianity.” Charon has so many demons that it’s, “where the poor are ostracized. Where girls are called whores if they report rape. Where I can't go into the [local bar] without wondering if the bartender done spit in my drink.”
As you can tell, Crosby's All the Sinners Bleed is one gritty murder mystery. The very title comes from a snake-handling local preacher's sign outside his remote church. His idea of Christianity is “praise the lord and pass the copperheads.”* He's a whack job made worse by being an avowed white nationalist. But is he also a mass murderer? As if Titus doesn't have enough problems, one of his deputies might be on the take, Cunningham thinks he runs the Sheriff's Office, and a reporter from Indiana who happens to be an old flame shows up in his office and wants access to the investigation. And people wonder why Titus is close lipped, no-nonsense, and cynical.
The very darkness of All of Sinners Bleed places it within a fiction genre called “Southern noir.” Noir is also characterized by damaged protagonists. By the time Cunningham tells Crowne he is working to make sure he won't be reelected, Titus hardly cares; he just wants to catch the Lone Wolf and avenge the murder of black children. He's so obsessed that even Darlene thinks she’s had enough.
Don't think the novel winds down as Titus gets close to the truth. Titus astutely remarks that, “no place was more confused by its past or terrified of the future than the South.” Before All the Sinners Bleed resolves completely, some dirty family secrets come to light, a few families begin the reconciliation process, white nationalists gather, a public showdown occurs, people die, a statue tumbles, and Titus is forced to do some needed self-analysis.
All the Sinners Bleed is both a taut mystery and a searing indictment of American racism. It confirms that the South is indeed terrified of the future. History has a lot to do with that nervousness, though it’s not the kind rednecks want to hear.
Rob Weir
* If you don’t know, snake-handling churches are a thing. Adherents take a literal read of a passage from the Gospel of Mark that true believers can take up poisonous serpents– like rattlers and copperheads–and shall not be harmed. Let the record show that not all adherents have been true believers.
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