If “The Godfather” had been about a black family in a Virginian small town, it would be this book by S.A. Cosby.
I’m not a fan of “The Godfather,” but I loved this book! And the ending took me by surprise, even though it shouldn’t have. If I read more crime dramas, I probably would have seen it coming.
The book is told in third person, and while we do get some scenes without Roman Carruthers, it’s mostly told in third-person limited from his perspective.
When Roman was a kid, his mother disappeared and her car was found on the train tracks. Many people including Roman’s sister, Neveah, assume their dad killed her, possibly because she might have been having an affair with one of their employees.
As adults, Roman is the one who got out, having moved to a big city to become a financial advisor and wealth manager. Neveah got stuck taking over the family business and trying to keep Dante out of trouble. Dante is the baby who keeps fucking up and trying to prove he’s not a fuckup. Unfortunately, he is a fuckup, so his attempts to prove he’s not tend to result in him fucking up and making everything worse.
Roman’s trip home is prompted by the fact that his dad has ended up in the hospital after his car was hit by a train. It quickly comes to light that Dante is in big trouble with, Torrent, one of the local gang leaders. He had told Torrent he could sell a bunch of drugs for him, but he made the mistake of enlisting one of his friends to help him sell said drugs. His friend told Dante the drugs were stolen so he could sell them and keep the money for himself, but Dante is too trusting to believe that, even though Roman immediately figures out what happened.
When Torrent comes to collect his money, Roman has to use all his powers of negotiation to convince him not to kill him and Dante. Roman literally gets his teeth knocked out in the process and Dante loses a finger or two. Fortunately, Roman can afford to go straight to a dentist for some high-quality veneers. Unfortunately, Dante is a whiny little bitch who is incapable of doing anything other than sitting around and whining about his problems instead of doing anything to solve them. That leaves Roman to clean up his mess.
Roman is in quite the pickle because, once he convinces Torrent he can get him his money back, Torrent spots a golden goose. If Roman can get him that much money that easily, he must be good for a lot more. So he demands Roman pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in perpetuity or he’ll kill Dante.
Letting Dante get killed is not an option because, despite the fact that he’s a fuckup, he’s still Roman’s brother.
But being extorted for the rest of his life is also not an option.
Fortunately, Roman has a very loyal employee with a checkered past who is able and willing to fly to Jefferson Run at a moment’s notice and help Roman out. They hatch a plan to dismantle Torrent’s gang, but the reader doesn’t get let in on the plan any more than Dante does. Instead, we’re left to watch it unravel, so we don’t know until the last page if things are going according to plan or if everything’s up in the air.
While that’s happening, Neveah is also trying to find proof her father killed her mother. She has a “friend” at the police station who gets her the file on her mother’s disappearance, and she also finds some evidence at the house that seems pretty concrete.
It’s not until almost the very end of the book that the reader finds out what really happened to their mom, which also explains why Dante is so useless.
This type of book is not normally my thing, but I couldn’t get enough of it. I grabbed it from my library because I saw it on someone’s list of the best books of the year so far, and they were not wrong! It’s so well written, the characters are fully fleshed out, and the mystery unfolds beautifully.
If you get a chance to listen to the audiobook, I highly recommend it because the narrator does a phenomenal job.