Chris & Mike review what just might be the best book we've read so far this year - All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby.
Please subscribe, rate & review using Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting platform. You can find us online at ThrillerPod.com and on Twitter or Instagram @ThrillerPodcast.
This episode is made possible thanks to our fantastic Patrons! For less than the price of a novel a month, you can help us keep the show going and get access to exclusive content and signed book giveaways! Become a Patron today at Patreon.com/ThrillerPod
00:00:15
Hey, guys, I'm Chris. And I'm Mike.
00:00:19
And welcome back to this week's No Limits the Thriller podcast.
00:00:24
How you doing this week, Mike? Chris I'm doing great because
00:00:29
right in front of me I got a copy of Deadfall by Brad Thor,
00:00:33
Code Read by Vince Lynn, Kyle Mills.
00:00:37
All the sinners Bleed by SA Cosby.
00:00:40
I think I have a lineup with the top three books I'm going to
00:00:43
read this year sitting right out on my desk.
00:00:45
Can't get much better. That's that's intriguing to
00:00:48
think about. Top three, Top three books.
00:00:50
You know, that's something we haven't done.
00:00:54
Since starting the POD is like doing a ranking of everything we
00:00:57
read during the year, I guess mainly because we have been
00:01:00
focusing on, you know, these two series.
00:01:03
But now that we're diving into other things, it'd be
00:01:07
interesting and you know, in all of our copious amounts of free
00:01:10
time, read other books, yeah, that'd be interesting to to do
00:01:14
that and maybe we'll say that for POD at the end of the year.
00:01:16
But yes, I'm excited today. To talk about all the centers
00:01:22
bleed, I'm excited next week to talk about Deadfall.
00:01:25
I'm exciting excited next month to talk about Kyle Mills.
00:01:30
Last book brings a tear to my eye.
00:01:33
In the meantime we're also going to cover Kyle Mills old book
00:01:36
Fates. We we have a jam packed.
00:01:38
Luckily I have a 12 day road trip planned where I'm going to
00:01:42
get a lot of reading done. Yeah it's it's it's fun times
00:01:45
here on the third of the podcast.
00:01:47
Really is. I mean, it was so exciting
00:01:48
putting this list together. It sounds a little daunting I I
00:01:52
put quite a few books between now and the end of 2023.
00:01:57
But it's going to be a blast. They there were some big names
00:02:00
there we're sprinkling and Andrews and Wilson Ward Larson
00:02:04
and a good old friend of the podcast.
00:02:06
And today I think Sean Cosby essay.
00:02:09
Cosby was one of our very early authors when we started doing
00:02:14
the author series on the Mitrap podcast because.
00:02:19
That book Blacktop Wasteland blew us away.
00:02:22
Very good book. It was I think Sean's first like
00:02:26
mate book that went mainstream. I know he published another one
00:02:29
or maybe even two before that, but that one put him on the map
00:02:33
and man, when he followed that up with Razor Blade Tears last
00:02:36
year and now all the sinners bleed this year.
00:02:40
He is just established as a name in I would say all of.
00:02:45
Literature and fiction. He's just a a novelist who
00:02:49
touches on his books are crime, mystery, their thriller, their
00:02:54
action. But the settings that he's
00:02:57
taking us to are so rooted in his life, his background and
00:03:01
rooted in the sense of Americana in in in the way he sees it.
00:03:05
And it's really compelling read, very different than anything we
00:03:10
cover on the podcast, yet so vital, so important for.
00:03:15
For the American consciousness right now.
00:03:18
Yeah, you know you got got a shout out by a couple times by
00:03:20
president former President Obama and he's you know constantly
00:03:25
getting on these end of the yearbook lists.
00:03:27
I know Razor Blade Tears as well as Blacktop Wasteland very
00:03:33
highly regarded. We didn't get a I didn't get a
00:03:35
chance to read Razor Blade Tears you you did read it and we that
00:03:38
because I didn't have a chance to read it.
00:03:40
We haven't covered it on the pod yet.
00:03:41
You know I'd be interesting to go back and and check that out.
00:03:45
And then there's another book that both escaped both of our
00:03:48
eyes. What's his third book?
00:03:50
Well, it was his. It was a first one.
00:03:53
And let's see what it was because it came out before
00:03:57
Blacktop, my darkest prayer. Oh, that came actually before
00:04:01
Blacktop Wasteland, OK. Right, that came out in 2018,
00:04:04
Blacktop Wasteland 2020. So yeah, that was a much earlier
00:04:07
book and like I said. It didn't get as much traction
00:04:10
as Blacktop Wasteland, but I think a lot of people like we
00:04:13
should went back to it as after realizing how good of an author
00:04:17
Sean is. Definitely, Definitely.
00:04:21
So what do you say was you want to get into his latest 1/20/23
00:04:24
release? All the sinners bleed.
00:04:26
Dude, absolutely. Let me give you the synopsis.
00:04:30
This is from Scribe, a black sheriff, a serial killer.
00:04:36
A small town ready to combust, Titus Crown is the first black
00:04:41
sheriff in the history of Charron County, Virginia.
00:04:44
In recent decades, quiet, Charron has had only two
00:04:47
murders. But after years of working as an
00:04:50
FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his
00:04:53
hometown might seem like the land of moonshine, cornbread and
00:04:56
honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface.
00:05:00
Then, a year to the day after Titus's election, a school
00:05:03
teacher is killed by a former student, and that student is
00:05:05
fatally shot by Titus's deputies.
00:05:08
As Titus investigates the shooting, he unearths terrible
00:05:11
crimes and a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight,
00:05:14
haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of chair.
00:05:18
With the killer's possible connections to a local church
00:05:20
and the town's harrowing history at weighing on him, Titus
00:05:23
projects confidence about choosing the closing the case
00:05:26
while concealing a painful secret from his own past, and at
00:05:29
the same time. He also has to contend with a
00:05:31
far right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of
00:05:34
the town's Confederate history chair.
00:05:37
And his side is his home and his heart.
00:05:39
But where faith and violence meet, there will be reckoning.
00:05:44
Ooh, I like that. Where faith and violence meet,
00:05:47
there will be reckoning. Oh, there will be a reckoning,
00:05:51
this whole book. I should put that as the, the
00:05:55
ending and as always. There will be reckoning.
00:05:58
There will be a reckoning, dude, the same way that line packs a
00:06:03
punch. There's so many kind of either
00:06:06
short pithy lines like that that are enveloped in meaning, or
00:06:11
there are other descriptions steeped in classical literature.
00:06:14
Like. It's amazing how well educated
00:06:18
Sean is and that comes through in his writing, but he puts that
00:06:22
into Titus's language the same way Titus is correcting some of
00:06:26
the pastors. On their knowledge of Scripture.
00:06:29
He can quote the Bible and. Quote the Bible.
00:06:32
He can even call out people who are, you know, cherry picking
00:06:34
and using quotes out of context. And then even just the name this
00:06:39
Sharon County or Sharon County makes you think of Karen, you
00:06:43
know, the, you know, the the ferryman of the dead across the
00:06:46
River Styx in Greek mythology. And that's essentially what
00:06:50
Titus is saying. He's coming back into the county
00:06:52
and just encountering death and. Crime and corruption and and
00:06:58
sin, you know, all the sinners bleed it.
00:07:01
It's almost like is he Karen? Is he carrying people across the
00:07:07
river, the souls who knows back and forth from the underworld to
00:07:10
the underworld? As the sheriff, what's his role,
00:07:13
right? And there's a lot of death with
00:07:15
the morgue and everything. It's just amazing how how many
00:07:19
references there are to classical literature and even
00:07:23
Dante. I I think it one of the
00:07:24
killings. Maybe when he finds all the kids
00:07:27
under the Willow tree, Dude, that's just insane.
00:07:30
How their bodies are mangled up and eaten up into the roots, who
00:07:34
who grew and grappled around their dead corpses.
00:07:38
And it's either there or one of the other killings where he
00:07:41
enters into it and thinks abandoned.
00:07:43
Hope all ye who enter here, you know from Dante going down into
00:07:48
into the circles of hell. It's just the amount of
00:07:52
references to scripture to literature.
00:07:55
He's just insane and sprinkled throughout this book in really,
00:07:59
really intelligent ways. Where do you begin besides Titus
00:08:05
motherfucking Crown? Like this guy is such a great
00:08:11
character, Not just a thriller character, not just a sheriff,
00:08:16
you know, in a police detective kind of story, mystery novel,
00:08:21
but I think in just American fiction.
00:08:24
I mean, I couldn't help but read this book and think this could
00:08:26
be required reading material. I I think that's the level of
00:08:30
craft and importance that this book it is putting out there
00:08:34
into the universe. It it really does so many
00:08:36
things. Well, not just the very
00:08:39
prescient political social, you know, zeitgeist of the times,
00:08:42
but also just tells a really, really compelling story.
00:08:45
So if not taught in like general English language arts curricula
00:08:50
very much in like a college intro to writing class.
00:08:54
Just to break down his characters, his setting, his
00:08:56
plot, his pacing, his action scenes, his family dynamics,
00:09:00
like everything is in this book. I was interested to see if there
00:09:05
was going to be any pushback to this novel in terms of, you
00:09:08
know, the political landscape that he doesn't shy away from
00:09:11
it. And it's not like I don't want
00:09:15
to say beat you over the head with it, but it's, you know,
00:09:18
it's definitely a part of the story and I think it's, you
00:09:21
know, obviously something we should be talking about.
00:09:23
Coming out of 2020 George Floyd and so you know I feel like this
00:09:31
now three years removed from that situation.
00:09:34
It's like important to you know comment on that and everything
00:09:38
he brings up. You know I've I've seen you know
00:09:41
living in you know it's interesting to read his stuff
00:09:45
both Razor Blade or Black Half Wasteland and this novel and you
00:09:49
know growing up in and around. The Richmond area, like I grew
00:09:53
up in Fredericksburg. Well, I grew up in Northern
00:09:54
Virginia, but like my my grandparents and my parents grew
00:09:58
up in Fredericksburg, Stafford area.
00:10:00
I grew up vacationing for a month at a time, you know, in in
00:10:04
a camp, in a camper at Virginia Beach.
00:10:08
And all of my, my grandma's cousins are are from the
00:10:11
Chesapeake area. So you know everything that he's
00:10:14
describing in the landscape as well as in the people I've seen.
00:10:19
You know and and some of this you know the Christian ways.
00:10:24
I you know Titus. Titus plays it straight.
00:10:26
He plays it like it is. I would love to see this as a
00:10:29
movie miniseries. You know Rang reminded me of
00:10:35
like what's that Criminal Minds. You know like like but I sorry,
00:10:41
I'm going all over the place. But to get back to I like the
00:10:44
way he interwove both. A A commentary on the state of
00:10:48
the times as well as the past, while also giving us a banging
00:10:54
mystery. You know that there's like a few
00:10:57
things I want to pick. I want to know if you you you
00:11:00
picked them too. But besides that the the story
00:11:02
holds up pretty well. It's interesting, gripping page
00:11:06
Turner like I I crush this audio book more so than some of the,
00:11:11
you know, some of the other political thrillers like there.
00:11:15
At times I feel like when we read some of these that they're
00:11:19
not like super suspenseful, they're not like their action
00:11:23
and they're interesting. I want to see how it goes.
00:11:26
But this one is way more the the last novel I devoured like this
00:11:32
was Gone Girl. Like I read that first before
00:11:35
the setting in the movie and like it just, you know, I wanted
00:11:37
to know. I had to know what was going on.
00:11:40
So the same thing goes for all the sinners Blade. 100% And I
00:11:45
think because you mentioned crushing the audio book, which I
00:11:48
did too, I didn't want to stop this one.
00:11:50
I listened to it almost continuously through, I think in
00:11:53
like 3 sessions because you don't want to stop it.
00:11:57
And that's a credit to Adam Lazar White.
00:11:59
He narrated, yeah, he narrated all three of these books so far
00:12:04
and the way he can. Transform the story and make the
00:12:12
characters come alive is just insane.
00:12:15
And you combine that with Shawn's writing, which we said
00:12:19
from the very beginning when we covered Blacktop Wasteland.
00:12:22
It's almost poetry, the way he could set a scene and paint a
00:12:26
picture. I I feel like words on a page to
00:12:29
him is like an artist with a paintbrush on a canvas.
00:12:34
He's like the Bob Ross. He's painting it so vividly and
00:12:37
with incredible language. And then to have a narrator as
00:12:41
good as Adam Lazar White to bring it alive from the page to
00:12:46
an audio format. There's just two masters that
00:12:49
work here doing that right, like two true Craftsman, artisans,
00:12:53
professionals, and it It really, really is a treat.
00:12:57
I would say this is one of for something so freaking deep and
00:13:02
it kind of hurts your soul. And it really, it tears the
00:13:06
fabric, you know it's. Scary at times, yeah.
00:13:09
Right. The social fabric is totally
00:13:12
torn up and and presented to us front and center, but at the
00:13:17
same time it's so delightful to hear it explained in this way,
00:13:21
which brings me to a a big point I want to bring up today.
00:13:24
I think like you mentioned, a lot of people may see this as
00:13:28
too aggressive of a political or social commentary, if you will,
00:13:32
from the author's perspective. And I think in a lot of books,
00:13:36
whether it's Brad Thor that we're reading or Jack Carr, you
00:13:39
and I have called that out, right?
00:13:40
And so we have called out when an author is a little too
00:13:43
heavyhanded imposing their own, whether it's political,
00:13:47
philosophical, social, economic worldview into the book.
00:13:53
And it's done in a way that almost takes you out of the
00:13:55
story. It it breaks that
00:13:57
verisimilitude. I would say that does not happen
00:14:01
here because of a few really smart moves.
00:14:05
One is that we stay with Titus Crown, the protagonist, nearly
00:14:10
the entire book. I felt as if everything we saw
00:14:14
and felt as the reader was through his eyes, which means
00:14:20
we're also seeing the internal struggles that he's going
00:14:23
through. So when you're discussing
00:14:27
tearing down a Confederate monument, which has a very, very
00:14:31
powerful ending. Or whether you're commenting on
00:14:34
white nationalist rally, interrupting the fall festival,
00:14:37
this this town celebration, Whether you're talking about the
00:14:41
racially charged perspectives of the murders and Mr. Spearman.
00:14:44
Right? Yet the fact that we're seeing
00:14:48
it through Titus's eyes makes it palatable in the sense of I'm
00:14:54
sure the author is telling you his perspective.
00:14:59
But it doesn't feel heavyhanded because it's the character's
00:15:02
perspective as well. You don't have to break that or
00:15:05
force it into them because I buy hook, line, and sinker.
00:15:08
Titus is the most genuine, honest person when he has an
00:15:11
opinion that was formed with ration rationale, with reason,
00:15:16
with history, with experience, and everything we're seeing is
00:15:19
his own background. Similarly, that's not just all
00:15:22
the racial stuff, but I would even say his spiritual
00:15:25
struggles. It also this book is also a
00:15:29
commentary on spiritual life as well.
00:15:32
Right. But the fact that we're seeing
00:15:35
that through Titus's eyes with what he's had to deal with and
00:15:40
still is dealing with and all the doubt, right he's over and
00:15:45
over is criticizing everyone he runs into who tries to offer a
00:15:49
spiritual perspective on these murders and this tragedy.
00:15:53
He's so. He's he's not, he's anti
00:15:57
receptive. He will not receive any of it
00:15:59
willingly. But then at the end you know he
00:16:02
he really feels his mother spirit.
00:16:04
She he, she really resonates with him.
00:16:07
And so almost this whole book is him going on a journey to try to
00:16:12
find that and uncover that after resisting it so much based on
00:16:15
the the hard reality of life. I really like seeing all of
00:16:19
these issues through Titus's eyes.
00:16:24
Like, and the only time we're ever pulled away from him is
00:16:27
when we see a new body, right. We we go and meet up with
00:16:32
someone who inevitably is going to run in to a body or someone
00:16:35
who was going to get killed. And that was interesting to be
00:16:38
sort of taken away from the main timeline and sort of like peek a
00:16:42
little bit behind, you know, either the killer's eyes or you
00:16:46
know what's going on with with the killer.
00:16:50
Yeah. And at the beginning of this
00:16:52
book, just. The first chapter like just grip
00:16:55
me like talking about this fictional which I I did my
00:17:00
research and this Charron County is is a fictional county in
00:17:03
Virginia. But again I will say that
00:17:07
everything that he's talking about is is like pulling from
00:17:11
whether or not it's a one specific county or or you know
00:17:14
the general area down in the Chesapeake or you know sort of
00:17:17
right near. It goes in Yorktown, right where
00:17:21
the Rabbahan ache in New York and the Chesapeake Bay all meet.
00:17:24
You know, he's, he's got it nailed, you know, locked on.
00:17:29
You know some of these stories that he brings up, I think by
00:17:32
making a a fictitious county allows him to pull multiple
00:17:35
stories from like that are real stories from like other counties
00:17:39
or even you know come up with some whole cloth on his own to
00:17:44
develop this county as a character.
00:17:47
You know it kicks off the Sharon county is cursed it's it's it's
00:17:50
a place of death and it goes through cycles We're we've been
00:17:54
in a long period of of happiness and we're about to you know go
00:17:59
back into or you know at least stasis I guess not happiness but
00:18:02
like stasis you know non death and now we're about to go into
00:18:05
this period of death and then we we immediately kick it off by
00:18:08
going right into. This school shoot, you know,
00:18:11
this active shooter. I had no idea what this book was
00:18:15
about. You told me, like, we should
00:18:17
read it, and then, you know, we we kick right into that.
00:18:20
I'm like, what? OK, what's going on?
00:18:24
And then, like, you could tell that something was up with
00:18:29
Luttrell. You could tell that something
00:18:32
something's not right here and immediately, like, when he's
00:18:35
talking about the Angels and then check his phone.
00:18:38
I knew we were in store for like some some sort of mystery that
00:18:41
something was bad on that phone. Something was going to happen.
00:18:44
We were going to find out. Did not know.
00:18:46
I was going to take this whole turn of like essentially a
00:18:48
serial, serial killer plot and that, you know, this guy's been
00:18:53
killing kids for years. You know, this, this triumvirate
00:18:57
of all the people have been killing kids for years.
00:19:00
Yeah. And then we just go on this wild
00:19:02
ride, you know, from 1:00. Crime scene to the next it's
00:19:07
it's it's nonstop. Yeah, you're right about that
00:19:11
opening scene. It it was one of those
00:19:14
jawdropping pause whatever you're doing moments and and
00:19:18
really listen to this scene like you are forced.
00:19:23
Once it begins and he gets that radio call, that frantic message
00:19:27
to to report to the high school for that there's an active
00:19:31
shooter, the 2nd that report came in.
00:19:35
I I like froze. I I don't know if it's just me,
00:19:37
you know, being a teacher every day, it felt so real.
00:19:41
Things that I've thought about. You know, my my my my daily
00:19:45
commute like different emergency scenarios.
00:19:48
What would I do here What what am I going to encounter today?
00:19:52
I I couldn't believe how visceral my reaction was
00:19:56
listening to that scene and not to mention it's overlaid with.
00:20:03
All the police violence we've had in America and police
00:20:06
shootings, and now we've got Titus, a member of the
00:20:10
community, voted in by the community to clean up the
00:20:13
corruption, to make change. As much as he would like to heal
00:20:17
wounds and divides and establish, you know, trust again
00:20:21
in his, in his force and his team, he knows the community is
00:20:27
going to be walking on egg shell and they have to be walking on
00:20:30
egg shells with the community. Because it's so split.
00:20:33
And he encounters Luttrell, a boy who he basically saw grow up
00:20:38
from childhood. Calvin Lutrell's father was one
00:20:41
of his best friends, his close friends in high school.
00:20:43
He played football together. He said he was there for
00:20:46
Lutrell's little brothers. You know, he was the 5th person
00:20:49
to hold them in the hospital room when he was born.
00:20:51
It's like he really has a personal connection to this kid,
00:20:55
and that's what policing should look like, members of the
00:20:58
community who know the families. Who when something's going on
00:21:02
can maybe cool things down and he's really making progress
00:21:07
talking to Latrell and we as the audience are only hearing Angel
00:21:11
of death and he's he's even speaking in Aramaic.
00:21:15
Right. And Titus picks up on that when
00:21:17
everyone else says, you know he was a Muslim terrorist because
00:21:19
he was screaming Arabic phrases. No, like Titus is educated
00:21:24
enough with it and he he's tuned into what's going on.
00:21:28
He's not making snap judgments. Meanwhile, the other two cops on
00:21:31
this force happen to be white cops make that snap judgment
00:21:35
that he was running at them. He was a crazy madman with a
00:21:38
gun. He just shot this teacher and
00:21:40
they put him down. And Titus in his heart knew
00:21:43
there was maybe a better way to handle that.
00:21:45
Whether or not you argue, if it's a quote, UN quote, good
00:21:47
shoot. I get the sense that Sean is
00:21:50
really playing with is that a phrase that?
00:21:52
Should really be used is anything ever a good shoot.
00:21:55
But then, from a policing background, you know a good
00:21:57
shoot is when you are doing the right thing and protecting
00:21:59
yourself in the community from an imminent danger.
00:22:03
So we do need to talk about what that means.
00:22:05
But Titus's mind is just uncomfortable with this idea of
00:22:08
a good shoot because he knew Luttrell's family.
00:22:11
He knew there must be some layer of activity here that would
00:22:15
drive him this mad to do this. And he doesn't want a police
00:22:19
force just Willy nilly shooting a black boy because he's yelling
00:22:22
and waving a gun. You know, he he realizes that,
00:22:25
you know, heavy is the head that wears the visor.
00:22:27
He realizes he has to take this upon himself to change the
00:22:31
community. And it's going to be really,
00:22:32
really hard. Yeah.
00:22:35
And I think like, I think Sean is also trying to comment, You
00:22:42
can have a good place for us. You can have a community of your
00:22:45
people who are in tune with the community.
00:22:47
And also just understanding that like, you know someone coming at
00:22:50
someone with a gun, there are, you know, gut reactions.
00:22:54
So it's, yeah, you're right. Like it's forcing the reader to
00:22:57
have like a conversation in in while they're reading this, you
00:23:00
know, about these kind of things, which is interesting,
00:23:03
but then it quickly kind of like moves away from it, you know,
00:23:05
like it's it's not like beating you.
00:23:08
Over the head in terms of like, all right, we're gonna keep
00:23:10
coming back to this situation. It's like little little things.
00:23:13
We're gonna touch on it just to like lay like the groundwork I
00:23:16
guess. And in the sense of like, how do
00:23:17
we actually talk about this in this kind of form, you know,
00:23:20
instead of just cuz you don't really see that in our, you
00:23:26
know, literature that we read these thriller novels like it's
00:23:29
hardly ever touched on like this.
00:23:31
Yeah, and he does that like you said in real subtle but.
00:23:37
Ways that pack a punch. Because it was the
00:23:41
representative of the town's black community who told him,
00:23:47
you know, this is just another shooting, police shooting of a
00:23:49
black boy. And he even says, like, now
00:23:52
we've got a mother and a father who have to go explain to their
00:23:55
other son why he doesn't have a brother anymore.
00:23:58
And that's when Titus stops him and says, well, his name is
00:24:01
Lavonne. You know, like that that younger
00:24:03
brother has a name. And even tells him I was there
00:24:06
in the hospital room, I held him and he's like, look, you see me
00:24:09
as the bad guy because I'm wearing the badge and he's like,
00:24:12
but my team had to shoot somebody who I knew you know who
00:24:16
was my nephew, essentially. And so don't make snap judgments
00:24:21
about me because of my responsibilities I took on to
00:24:24
protect this town. Don't GroupMe in with them And
00:24:28
and he's and Titus is struggling the whole time with rejection
00:24:31
from his own community. Because of his role in the
00:24:33
police force. Yet he and his father even says
00:24:36
to him a lot of people are proud of you putting on that uniform
00:24:40
and he said you're so. Proud of you.
00:24:42
I love the fact that we stay in. Titus has had the whole book.
00:24:45
He's grappling with what that means, how hard the work's going
00:24:50
to be, and and this whole book is essentially him putting in
00:24:52
the work, even when both sides are coming at him vehemently,
00:24:57
aggressively, painfully. Racially, they're they're coming
00:25:02
at him so hard, yet he knows he has to hit the ground, put the
00:25:08
the legwork in, and then it's even the opposite.
00:25:10
You know, when he's dealing with like Ricky Sauer and the white
00:25:12
nationalist, he tells Jamal, you know, the leader of the black
00:25:16
church, he tells him like, look, Ricky Sauer got the permit for
00:25:20
this March, which was a community decision.
00:25:23
So, so literally the town board voted by the people, approved
00:25:27
this permit. And I, as a sheriff, have a
00:25:29
responsibility to do crowd control.
00:25:32
And the pastor thinks the pastor is like, you're marching with
00:25:35
them. You put on that uniform, now
00:25:36
you're marching with the white nationalist.
00:25:38
And Can you imagine a man like Titus hearing that from his own,
00:25:42
you know, his own brother? Essentially, it's like, what
00:25:46
does that mean for him to hear that one at one time even calls
00:25:49
him a racial slur. A couple of them do.
00:25:51
And it's just like, what must that mean for Titus?
00:25:55
And we get to see. In his mind, how he responds to
00:25:58
it and he is just he's a force to be reckoned with, this guy.
00:26:03
Yeah, very much so. Are there any particular scenes
00:26:12
that talking about the story that stood out to you?
00:26:16
Like what were your favorite parts as we progressed along?
00:26:20
What were they the? You know, I'll just start one of
00:26:24
the things I really like, but like the the small moments that
00:26:26
we had like sort of that took us out of the the story, not not
00:26:31
like took me out of the story, but like we're a side piece, you
00:26:34
know we have the whole the building of the relationship
00:26:38
with his his father and then also like the restoring of
00:26:41
relationship with his, with his brother.
00:26:44
You had you know the non relationship of him with his
00:26:49
current girlfriend. Yeah, that that'll impact.
00:26:54
You have the, you know, his his struggles of, like, why he had
00:27:01
to leave the FBI, you know, like.
00:27:04
And I think that's why I like this novel so much because we
00:27:06
learned so much about this character and his, you know, the
00:27:10
context around them. Shawn does a great job of giving
00:27:14
us great character development. So that, like, when you're done
00:27:19
with the novel, yeah, there were a lot of different characters,
00:27:21
but I felt like a lot of them. I knew at least a portion of
00:27:26
them a lot. You know, even like some of the
00:27:28
little characters who get killed, he does a good job
00:27:32
describing them. And you know, we, we begin to
00:27:36
understand, you know, what who they are and what they represent
00:27:39
in this community. You know, you could see like
00:27:41
everyone in a community would have someone like this.
00:27:45
You know, to show that like this is this is a real lived in
00:27:48
community, you know? It added to the vibrancy and and
00:27:52
realism of the story and and I like what you said about there's
00:27:56
a large cast of characters here and I thought about that for a
00:28:00
moment. The characters we we come to
00:28:03
love and see a lot of our dynamite from Titus, his father
00:28:06
August Hit hit, both his girlfriends, Darlene mainly but
00:28:10
also Kelly, his ex. We're learning so much about the
00:28:14
people who really matter in the story.
00:28:17
But then you're right, we're getting a healthy view of maybe
00:28:22
10 or more even other side characters, which at first I I
00:28:29
was getting a little lost and I thought maybe it was me and I'm
00:28:32
like, am I getting bogged down lost with all these characters?
00:28:36
Or is it that the writing's getting a little jumbled here?
00:28:40
And in the end, I came around and actually really liked it
00:28:44
because it felt like an Agatha Christie story, a whodunit.
00:28:47
All of a sudden it's like I I met so many people tangentially
00:28:51
that I had to file them away in my brain, as, you know, suspect
00:28:55
#1, suspect #7, suspect 8, you know, even Darlene, at one point
00:29:00
we find out, is ambidextrous and uses both her hands.
00:29:04
And what's cool is that was just after we found out the murderer
00:29:07
did the same thing. So it's like.
00:29:09
Oh wait, is she? Is she the murderer?
00:29:11
You know? Is it her?
00:29:12
Right. I'm like that little thing.
00:29:14
But that little nugget of information was also there's
00:29:19
some rumor that it was an ex-boyfriend who slammed her
00:29:22
door and her her hand in a car door or something like that.
00:29:25
And Titus didn't really want to know the answer because you
00:29:28
know, he would have went hog on the dude.
00:29:29
So it's like, wait, that nugget was told to us?
00:29:32
At first I thought to make her a suspect, but then later it was
00:29:37
revealed. She's off the suspect list
00:29:40
because there was a back story there.
00:29:41
There was a reason for whatever happened, why she uses both
00:29:44
hands because of a prior injury, you know, So a lot of these
00:29:47
little reveals of the characters kept you on the edge of your
00:29:50
seat. And I didn't even realize till I
00:29:53
started going through the book again when I think his name was
00:29:56
Cole Miller. I know his first name was Cole.
00:29:59
The first body that they find, not the kids, not the kids
00:30:02
buried in the tree, but the first body who was hanging and
00:30:05
oh. Oh, that was, you know, he's
00:30:08
taking a he's taking a note out of Jack Carr's like, book.
00:30:14
Yeah. Like what?
00:30:16
Cutting through the back, Pulling the lungs through and
00:30:20
then lifting them up to make them look like actual wings?
00:30:24
Peeling the skin off of the guy's face.
00:30:30
Oh my God, it it gave me nightmares like that night.
00:30:33
It was, it was, it was really creepy.
00:30:35
Yeah, like, Oh my God. But here's the thing.
00:30:37
We were so focused on how gruesome that was because the
00:30:40
writing was insanely detailed. But just a few chapters earlier
00:30:48
we had seen Cole with Royce Lazar hanging out.
00:30:52
I don't think it was the watering hole, but I think it
00:30:54
was at the diner, the the lady who had the diner, who who was
00:30:57
dating his father August for a little while and they were
00:31:00
hanging out at the diner and they asked Titus like.
00:31:04
You know what's going on with this case?
00:31:06
And Royce Lazar, who is the the bad guy?
00:31:09
He's the the Angel of death. He was there and he was asking
00:31:12
questions about it with Cole. So when Titus gets a phone call
00:31:16
that there's somebody who wants to tip him off who's close to
00:31:18
the killer but wasn't in concert with the killer, wasn't an
00:31:22
accomplice, but knows enough. It's somebody close to the
00:31:24
killer. And we just saw these two dudes
00:31:26
hanging out together at the restaurant like it all is going
00:31:29
to fall into place. Throughout the course of the
00:31:32
story. But I didn't even remember that
00:31:33
we saw him. Yeah, earlier.
00:31:35
I didn't until you just told me. Right now, Yeah, I had no idea.
00:31:39
When I went back and read it the second time, little things like
00:31:41
that were amazing. Popped out.
00:31:43
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he even comes up another
00:31:46
time they crossed he sees. Him.
00:31:49
I remembered him being getting a shout out when I guess the first
00:31:55
time he sees the group of. Sons of the competitors, see,
00:31:59
they're they're going to they're going to rally.
00:32:01
And then he makes a comment like, oh, there's even the, you
00:32:04
know, Royce O'Neal, who's the bus driver And he, it's awful
00:32:07
that he sees all the children and like, now in retrospect like
00:32:12
that, that should have been a red flag for me early on.
00:32:16
But I, yeah, I just, I missed it the first time around, so.
00:32:18
Well, again, just like the gruesome hanging body with the
00:32:22
with the lungs stretched out his wings, We're kind of distracted
00:32:25
by that. We miss these clues.
00:32:27
Because at that time when he's thinking that it's in the middle
00:32:30
of this conflict over someone who spray painted the statue,
00:32:34
someone defeated the statue and then Ricky Sower's boys held him
00:32:38
down, you know, so there was like this clash and we're so
00:32:43
distracted by it all. But that allows for another
00:32:46
powerful moment, just cementing Titus as basically what we need
00:32:51
in this country. He takes the kid aside like a 17
00:32:54
year old and or whatever and he talks to him and he's like.
00:32:58
Yeah, if you were the one who spray painted this thing, like,
00:33:01
I'm not under any legal obligation to tell your parents,
00:33:05
But like, I would go home and I would set the record straight
00:33:07
with them and let them know what you said, what you did.
00:33:09
Like, you're lucky they're not pressing charges.
00:33:12
The Daughters of the Confederacy don't even have a chapter near
00:33:14
here, and it's their property. So, you know, no one's going to
00:33:17
press charges on this. But like, I want you to own up
00:33:20
to what you did. And he didn't.
00:33:22
He didn't tell the kid like you're wrong.
00:33:23
You broke the law. He wasn't the law man for this
00:33:25
kid who graffiti this Confederate statue.
00:33:29
He had a heart to heart with him, pulled him off to the side.
00:33:32
And unfortunately, Jamal, the very aggressive pastor, comes up
00:33:35
and goes. Too bad you couldn't do what you
00:33:37
did for that kid to Latrell before your boy shot him.
00:33:40
And it's like, dude, like Titus just did the right thing for
00:33:44
this kid. He didn't chastise him, lock him
00:33:47
up or beat him like Ricky Sour boys want him to do for spray
00:33:50
painting a Confederate statue. He did offer the other side the
00:33:53
chance to press charges, but it wasn't their property and they
00:33:56
had no right to detain this kid, right.
00:33:59
They held him down after they caught him doing the graffiti,
00:34:02
and the white nationalist had no right to do that.
00:34:03
So he's like, look, we can press charges on you too.
00:34:05
He defused the situation and he spoke to both groups as an
00:34:10
objective lawman should, but Jamal comes at him and goes
00:34:13
like. You know, he's just, he's taking
00:34:17
it from both sides. And I'm just like Titus is
00:34:19
trying to do the good thing in this world, yet he only sees
00:34:22
darkness, He only sees despair. He's pushing faith away.
00:34:25
And all the people he does see leading these churches, whether
00:34:28
it's Jamal in the black church or this crazy pastor who
00:34:32
actually is the one who raised the killer, the snake charmer.
00:34:35
Dude, all these people have failed him.
00:34:38
They failed the community. They're failing to live up to
00:34:41
the best of what they should be in their in their respective
00:34:44
spaces. And and all that weight is put
00:34:47
on Titus and you feel it the whole time.
00:34:49
While this book is delightful to read, it's so suffocating
00:34:54
because it's so real. Dude, I couldn't even even said
00:34:59
it better. It's that that that it hits it.
00:35:02
Yeah, they know that. I think there's a couple of
00:35:05
these side characters that I want to get into when we talk
00:35:07
about the bad guys, for sure get into our scorecard.
00:35:11
You know one thing I wanted to bring up a minor nitpick.
00:35:14
And maybe it's just because I watch, you know, some of these
00:35:17
shows on TV, but for me, I feel like would they would he have
00:35:23
been given this much of A leeway to continue the investigation,
00:35:26
you know? Yeah.
00:35:28
I feel like, I guess does the FBI have to be called in by him?
00:35:32
It's it's always going to be his call until he till he makes that
00:35:36
call to bring in, you know, more help.
00:35:39
I don't know. I I just remember seeing like
00:35:41
Criminal Minds like, oh, shit, we got it.
00:35:42
We like. Two killings and I boom, they're
00:35:45
on a plane, you know, and going somewhere.
00:35:47
I mean, I know it's a show, it's not real life.
00:35:48
But I just felt like this. We're in.
00:35:50
The State police, The Virginia State Police, I thought they'd
00:35:53
come in a lot sooner. I didn't know.
00:35:55
They have to be asked after what?
00:35:56
Like 8 murders or something? And they came in and they're
00:35:59
like yeah we're not we're not going to we're not going to take
00:36:01
over. This is this is your your deal.
00:36:03
You just. Do you think that's like a power
00:36:05
struggle there, though? Do you think that's the point?
00:36:07
They're not going to pay attention to a small backwater
00:36:10
kind of. Small this I think if it's it's
00:36:13
one thing if it's one murder but then you have as soon as the the
00:36:18
child pornography comes in. I feel like that now becomes.
00:36:20
Federal That's a federal crime, right?
00:36:23
Yeah, so like the the feds would have been there immediately as
00:36:26
soon as they found the Kitty porn on Spearman's stuff.
00:36:31
And weren't some of the kids also from out of state, like the
00:36:35
ones who got murdered? Right or out of state not.
00:36:37
That state, but out of county. Definitely out of the way.
00:36:41
He drives to Maryland, right? So he goes to Baltimore, so.
00:36:44
Exactly right. That's.
00:36:45
That's as soon as it goes across state lines.
00:36:47
I feel like the feds would have been in there.
00:36:49
And so I I realize you got to suspend your, you know, it's a
00:36:52
story. So he, Sean, didn't want to have
00:36:55
the feds come in. He wanted him to be.
00:36:57
I thought that would have been interesting, you know, to be
00:36:59
this guy who used to be a Fed interacting with feds, like, you
00:37:04
know, seeing sort of that dynamic, that interaction.
00:37:08
What did you think about, like the whole story about, like, why
00:37:10
he got out of the feds or why he got asked out of the feds, That
00:37:14
was intense. That was really intense and
00:37:17
nobody really knew the full details of it except for him.
00:37:22
Like, I don't even think he told his father.
00:37:25
You know truly why I. Don't even think he, he
00:37:27
definitely didn't tell his current the, you know, the
00:37:29
Indiana that the girlfriend that he was seeing.
00:37:31
You know, they kind of just like decided to part ways, right?
00:37:34
So. Yeah.
00:37:36
No, that was intense. And and the fact that it was
00:37:40
this, what was he like, a 7 year old?
00:37:43
There was a kid in the white nationalist family.
00:37:45
Smiling at him while he pulls like the the grenade, right?
00:37:49
Pulls the pin on the grenade and I'm just like, yo, that's
00:37:54
insane. And then he has a chance to
00:37:56
confront it was the father, right?
00:37:58
Who he ends up shooting and? Was he justified and like,
00:38:03
compare that to a quote, Good shoot.
00:38:06
Like, good. It's a good shoot by the cops on
00:38:09
Latrell because he had just shot a teacher, But a teacher who
00:38:12
murdered multiple kids and was deeply manipulative of all the
00:38:18
the youth in this community versus this white nationalist
00:38:21
who is like, give me my rights, He's laying there.
00:38:24
He's, like smiling at him, like I'm going to get to go live in a
00:38:27
jail cell the rest of my life in relative comfort.
00:38:30
And Titus is like, fuck, no. And you know, finishes them off.
00:38:33
I'm like, is that not a good shoot?
00:38:35
Even though it was probably more justice, you know, once you have
00:38:39
the full picture. Have you seen the show
00:38:41
Justified? No.
00:38:43
I mean that's like the whole premise right, of of why Timothy
00:38:46
Olyphant's character is in Kentucky.
00:38:48
You know, he he, he, he does a justified quote UN quote
00:38:51
justified killing in in Miami and Florida working as the as a
00:38:56
Marshall. As a punishment, he gets sent to
00:38:58
the backwater. And so in this case, as a
00:39:00
punishment, he gets asked to leave the Bureau.
00:39:02
Right. Be interesting to see like what
00:39:05
what people would. I guess that's that's how it
00:39:07
happened to me. Essentially just murdered some
00:39:09
dude you know. Yeah.
00:39:13
Who you know who tried to kill you.
00:39:16
I guess you know. Can you can you claim, I guess
00:39:18
you can't claim self-defense. If he's if he's like like
00:39:20
begging for his Miranda rights, then sure, you know.
00:39:23
But that was an intense story though.
00:39:26
Yeah. Yeah, intense back story.
00:39:28
And we could see the scars and the damage that it had on Titus
00:39:32
and his relationships. All this, I feel like, is the
00:39:39
reason we can't get good people doing the jobs we need them to.
00:39:44
Because should it be this hard for a good person to execute
00:39:49
faithfully the responsibilities of their office?
00:39:52
You know, like. It it's only going to encourage
00:39:57
the good people trying to do the right thing, to give up, to not
00:40:01
push as hard, as tight, as not stay in the role.
00:40:04
Is it just me or is that how these things work?
00:40:07
Is that these systems are set up to not allow the good ones who
00:40:11
want to do the just thing to flourish?
00:40:15
I mean, sadly, you're you're probably true.
00:40:17
You know, that's one of the things we love about the MIT
00:40:20
Trap series and the Brad Thor series are these politicians who
00:40:23
are this act that the real villains, right.
00:40:25
You know, the people who are quote UN quote there to serve
00:40:28
the people do good when in actuality they're doing the
00:40:32
opposite. Yeah.
00:40:34
I mean I guess you don't want to be a true nihilist and like not
00:40:38
have any hope for humanity, but, you know, it's it's sad to think
00:40:41
that most of the time or a lot of the time.
00:40:45
You know, people are looking out for themselves.
00:40:48
I like how he again with these smaller characters, like there
00:40:52
was that one character who it's right after they had another
00:40:57
crazy scene where the guy who they you know, he was arrested,
00:41:02
charged the DUI since he was going to lose his CDL license.
00:41:06
So then he decides to drive his box truck.
00:41:09
Right through this crowd of people kills two does he kill?
00:41:13
I know he kills one person but definitely severely injuries
00:41:15
another person and then this is how messed up this town is.
00:41:20
The lady who's running you know the booth.
00:41:23
So you know essentially the treasurer for for the the fall
00:41:25
festival is so far in in embezzlement right now that she
00:41:29
needs the return on the tickets to like you know do her whole
00:41:32
Ponzi scheme. That she's like, well, we'll
00:41:35
just, we'll take a break, you know, it doesn't matter that
00:41:38
something just lost his live, you know, like.
00:41:40
The show must go on. Not to say that like that really
00:41:45
does happen, but I'm sure there's situations where it's,
00:41:47
you know, maybe not that extreme, but you know, the
00:41:49
situations like that where it's like, Nope, I'm too far in, I'm
00:41:54
too pot committed like this. This scheme has to go on and so.
00:41:58
Yeah, but Titus calls it, he says.
00:41:59
Everybody go home, you know, Life is blood has been spilled,
00:42:02
life has been lost here tonight. We're not doing this and he's
00:42:06
willing to speak up a lot to people because that very pushy.
00:42:12
Who is he? The the town supervisor?
00:42:15
Yeah, the Board of He's on the Board of Supervisors, yeah.
00:42:18
Yeah, like. He's the cat, the Callahan,
00:42:20
right? He's the one who owns the flag
00:42:21
factory and the crap the the seafood bullet factory.
00:42:25
Yet he's very pushy to Titus. A lot.
00:42:28
But Titus shuts him up. He speaks his mind, speaks his
00:42:32
truth. And like, I don't know if
00:42:35
anybody else would have done that.
00:42:37
And it turns out this guy is from a family of corruption and
00:42:40
is keeping a town like Sharon, you know, held back and where it
00:42:45
is and, you know, stocking the flames and encouraging the
00:42:49
divisions. And this guy just wants Titus
00:42:53
out of his hair. He says, I'll call a special
00:42:54
election. We'll recall you.
00:42:55
You're making no progress on this case.
00:42:58
I'll put my people in and like. It's just disgusting and and
00:43:02
somebody needs to speak up to it.
00:43:03
We had Titus to speak up up to these people and finally make a
00:43:07
change. But he's he's paying the price
00:43:09
for it. He's really paying the price for
00:43:11
it. Losing Darlene, having a torn
00:43:14
relationship with his brother who who let's talk Marquis.
00:43:18
He's a great side character even though it's so hard knowing how
00:43:23
he's you know kind of distance himself from his father and his
00:43:26
brother but at the same time. You could tell he loves them so
00:43:29
much when they're having some of their side chats, you know, just
00:43:32
on the back porch or something. I really like those moments
00:43:35
where the two brothers are just catching up and talking, even
00:43:39
though they they have their family problems.
00:43:42
No, definitely, for sure. That's like I said, like, I like
00:43:46
learning the little family dynamics between him and his
00:43:48
brother, him and his father, you know, the relationship that he
00:43:52
had to his mother. And you know how that's sort of
00:43:55
like pushed him away from this whole religion aspect of it.
00:43:58
You know, it really makes Titus like a true character, someone
00:44:02
that you know any of a reader reading this story could, could
00:44:06
potentially relate to. So yeah, and there's like a
00:44:10
little, you know, he's the one who warns him that he's, he's
00:44:13
got a mole in or a narc in his squad.
00:44:17
He's the one who warns him that. Maybe you know that.
00:44:21
The guys who own the local watering hole are not all these,
00:44:24
you know, are cracked up to be and putting them on the right
00:44:27
path to, you know, be able to solve various mysteries, you
00:44:30
know. And Titus is smart enough to do
00:44:32
it on his own. He's the one who concocts
00:44:35
various plans to figure it out. But he keeps getting foiled at
00:44:39
certain times. And so you know he he is the
00:44:41
sheriff that this town needs. Not definitely not the one that
00:44:45
the town wants. So what did you think of the
00:44:49
very end of the novel? You know, we he solves the
00:44:52
mystery. We get, you know, this final
00:44:55
showdown, pretty gruesome. Like I like the the mini
00:44:59
redemption arc for his one deputy who was, you know, he he
00:45:03
was the mong, right. It allows him to, you know, sort
00:45:06
of redeem himself for a short period of time until eventually
00:45:09
he meets his his demise. Yeah.
00:45:12
We we find out that it is this. Creepy bus driver who's half
00:45:18
black and the history of, you know, essentially the, the crazy
00:45:21
preachers, the one who bred him to be this way, right.
00:45:24
And then we get that culmination and we find out at the very end,
00:45:31
you know, he he's, he's succumbed to his wounds.
00:45:35
He wakes up a couple months later and he's decide to not be
00:45:38
a sheriff anymore. What did you think about that?
00:45:42
Yeah, I. I really like the ending, that
00:45:46
action sequence, everything from when they find the house, they
00:45:51
drop into the basement. He's fighting, he basically is
00:45:55
losing consciousness, but he just doesn't give up and really
00:46:00
gripping action scene. Like you said, he's with one of
00:46:02
his his deputies who we weren't sure what to think of that guy,
00:46:06
like he certainly had his moments where we we weren't on
00:46:10
his team. But ultimately ends up helping
00:46:13
Titus at the end and I thought for a minute his partner turned
00:46:16
on him and was leading him there.
00:46:19
He was going to be part of a one of the bad guys.
00:46:22
But no, he really helped Titus and and and saved his life there
00:46:26
at the end and lost his own. I I thought that was a really,
00:46:29
really gripping final scene. Yeah.
00:46:33
And I thought, like I said, poetic justice, the way he's
00:46:37
driving out of town. It's kind of.
00:46:40
Going to leave it all behind. Yet his legacy, the mark that
00:46:44
he's going to leave on Sharon before he peels out, it has to
00:46:49
involve the statue. I mean, it had to.
00:46:51
It was just. Yeah, it had to exactly.
00:46:53
That couldn't be left there, so. Such a smart move.
00:46:55
To have him tear that thing down while no one's watching and then
00:47:00
ride into the sunset essentially was that kind of ending.
00:47:02
So I thought it was a really, really, really good ending,
00:47:06
bringing all the parts together. And really stating clearly the
00:47:12
next steps that Titus is on to. Yep, Yep, Yep.
00:47:17
So you wanna do the scorecard? Yeah, yeah.
00:47:19
Let's deal with it, man. Let's get into it.
00:47:21
As we talked, there were a lot of things I forgot, and I think
00:47:24
we even left out a whole lot of scenes and other characters.
00:47:28
So let's try to cover it all here in the scorecard Action.
00:47:33
What do you give action and plot for this book?
00:47:36
I'm gonna give the action of solid eight, I think.
00:47:39
It's like a different kind of action.
00:47:40
So I I don't, you know, again this is the first time we're
00:47:43
really doing a mystery novel per se like this.
00:47:46
But it has at times some gripping.
00:47:50
You know I think of that end sequence.
00:47:51
I think of you know the the the school shooting I think of oh
00:47:55
his first interaction with the killer when the guy when the
00:47:59
killer kills the podcaster, you know because we when he go when
00:48:03
he gets asked to come like listen to his his podcast
00:48:06
portion. You know, there's like it's
00:48:08
little snippets like that where you know, we get to see, you
00:48:13
know, Sean writing some matching sequences and I really do enjoy
00:48:17
it. I agree.
00:48:18
I have to go a little bit higher because of that school shooting
00:48:22
opening scene. It was so thrilling and so real,
00:48:30
you know, just based on even my daily experience thinking of
00:48:32
what this could. It's unimaginable.
00:48:35
But what this could end up being like for a community and how it
00:48:38
would tear it wide open, I have to go 9.
00:48:41
Because of that and the final action sequence, hunting down
00:48:44
the killer, chasing them, you know, into the house, into the
00:48:47
basement. I got to go nine, yeah, nine out
00:48:50
of 10 on action. And similarly, I was prepared to
00:48:53
go 10 on plot because everything had a payoff, little details
00:49:00
sprinkled along the way. That weren't just sprinkled to
00:49:03
throw you off your scent, but also had meaning to the
00:49:06
characters and meaning for developing this town.
00:49:09
Even whether it's like the fish factory or the flag factory.
00:49:14
They did play an important role in like the characters, because
00:49:17
there was that one woman who worked at the factory with the
00:49:20
killer and kind of knew the killer and so you could tell
00:49:23
her. But that fish factory had more
00:49:26
meaning than that. It was almost like a rite of
00:49:28
passage for this town. Like everybody had some
00:49:31
connection to it. And the opposite with the flag
00:49:34
factory, right? It was not a cultural touchstone
00:49:38
of the of the community. It was basically just an
00:49:41
economic powerhouse. It was basically capitalism,
00:49:44
seeing this community as just labor and hands and not people.
00:49:47
And that's why his mother, you know, who worked there, was so
00:49:50
sick. And so I just, I just kind of
00:49:52
liked how that everything was painted fully.
00:49:54
Little details that were sprinkled in had a payoff.
00:49:57
They had a role in the plot. I do have to mark it down though
00:50:01
to a nine because one point for the state police and the FBI not
00:50:06
coming in sooner, that that was a bit of a gripe that I agree
00:50:10
with you on completely. So I'm not going to dig it a
00:50:12
lot. So just one point here on the
00:50:14
plot. Yeah, I I couldn't go full 10
00:50:17
without mentioning that. So you know it's it's got to be
00:50:20
knocked down points just and just purely for that.
00:50:22
Everything else is, is is pretty rock solid.
00:50:24
Yeah, I'm not gonna knock it on buy in though I don't want to
00:50:27
double Ding it because I have to go 5 on buy in purely on the you
00:50:31
cannot put it down, factor it, it's.
00:50:34
Yeah, same. Insanely compelling and
00:50:37
propulsive story. Yeah, no, I completely agree.
00:50:42
What about our villains? Like, you know, we have this
00:50:45
like triumbrant, triumbrant of villains ultimately with like 1
00:50:50
the ringleader, right? The the big bad.
00:50:52
But we also get like, you know a lot of there's a lot of like
00:50:55
little little ancillary villains.
00:50:57
There's the preacher who meets his end.
00:50:59
There's Ricky Sowers and his voice.
00:51:01
There's, you know, the the guy who owns the flag factory.
00:51:06
I'm forgetting is it Calhoun Calligan.
00:51:08
I forget his first name is Scott.
00:51:10
But they're all interesting. And I I mentioned this before
00:51:15
like I feel like his side characters he does a decent
00:51:19
amount with the. Character progression and
00:51:23
character story building character, you know, they're
00:51:26
fully fleshed out characters and so yeah, I would go pretty high
00:51:31
on the bad guys. Solid like 4-4 and A.
00:51:35
Half. Really.
00:51:36
OK, I think this is where I'm going to go.
00:51:40
A little bit lower, but I do just want a caveat.
00:51:44
I think it's hard saying villains and heroes in this
00:51:46
story just because it shows. The humanity of everybody, the
00:51:51
good humanity, but also the temptations to evil and sin for
00:51:57
everybody. I mean, let's not forget them.
00:51:59
I I would honestly even say the other main villain, Mr.
00:52:03
Spearman, like it's just so terrifying how he manipulated
00:52:08
this community And so like if if our ultimate killer is, you
00:52:14
know, or the last wolf is really the the vicious, gruesome.
00:52:18
Spiritually motivated, torn apart villain.
00:52:22
Mr. Spearman was the manipulative villain, the force
00:52:26
behind it all and that is just even more tragic in some ways,
00:52:30
you know, So he was really good. The main villains were great.
00:52:35
I I do have to say though I I'm going down to a three just
00:52:38
because I I think they were villains in this story.
00:52:43
But I don't know. Well, I don't know.
00:52:45
I just have to say I didn't think the cast of characters are
00:52:48
bad enough and sometimes with the villains back story of like
00:52:52
he was half black, half white, he was raised to hate the black
00:52:55
side of him so this was a way for him to kill black people you
00:52:59
know as a way of cleansing himself.
00:53:02
I think this is 1 downfall of not being in their point of
00:53:05
view, like we didn't hear Mr. Spearman ever talk or he was
00:53:08
dead already from the first page.
00:53:10
The the the bad guy may be called once on the phone or
00:53:14
twice, talked to Titus, but we were never in their head seeing
00:53:17
what they were doing. I think that worked for the most
00:53:20
part, but I would have liked just a little more page time of
00:53:23
of seeing what the bad guys were doing before it just happened,
00:53:28
you know, and we're walking a farm, finding a dead body
00:53:30
hanging there. I think we could have been in
00:53:33
their shoes just a tad bit more. Maybe a nitpick, but.
00:53:37
Yeah. I don't know.
00:53:38
I guess I disagree. I don't think we saw enough of
00:53:40
them. And I guess that's what I'm
00:53:41
trying to say. But like, actually, here's how
00:53:45
I'll put it. I I would, I would totally not.
00:53:47
I would take back some of what I just said.
00:53:49
I don't know if I completely agree, but here's what I was
00:53:51
getting at when it was revealed. And he's like, Lazar is an
00:53:56
acronym and you could change it. And it's like resolve, which is
00:53:59
some demonic thing. I was like, yeah, but who is
00:54:01
that there, there wasn't enough connective tissue between Titus
00:54:05
having this eye opening. It's this guy.
00:54:07
I know who it is. And I just feel like, yeah, but
00:54:10
who is that? I don't know who that is.
00:54:12
That's a random Yes, we met him a long time ago, but there
00:54:14
wasn't enough connective tissue. So you're saying it would have
00:54:17
been a better payoff if it was another major character that we
00:54:21
had actually spent more time with?
00:54:22
Maybe not major, but a little bit more present than hiding
00:54:28
than hanging around in the background of a few scenes.
00:54:31
Yeah, now I'm kind of have to cripple.
00:54:33
I said the opposite earlier. Yeah, yeah, you did.
00:54:36
So I'm calling you out on that. But do I?
00:54:38
I don't know. It's in the moment.
00:54:40
It's in the moment. No, no.
00:54:40
Give it a three. Keep it a three all.
00:54:41
Right, the reveal, though that reveal didn't hit for me when
00:54:44
Titus realized to him true. I guess whether or not he's a
00:54:48
background character or mid major, whatever kind of
00:54:50
character the reveal was, I guess that's why we haven't
00:54:55
really spent much time about it. Like the action part of it was
00:54:58
cool, but like the reveal wasn't like.
00:55:00
Oh my God, that was crazy. Like there's been crazier
00:55:03
reveals in in like. It was him, No.
00:55:06
Way, right, right. You could kind of tell it was it
00:55:09
was just going to be someone in the community who you know, and
00:55:13
they were, I guess they have been talking about it being this
00:55:16
boy for so long. So you kind of, like had an
00:55:19
image of like who he was in your head.
00:55:20
And then you find out, oh, he's actually this guy who we met
00:55:23
like briefly like so. Like the bigger, like, crazy
00:55:27
thing where that, like this guy was actually is Scott's brother
00:55:30
or half brother, you know, like that.
00:55:31
Like those reveals were more of a bigger deal to me than the
00:55:36
actual knowing his new identity. Like who he is, you know, unless
00:55:41
like you said, you know, let's say he was that one cop who had
00:55:45
been there for a long time or or one of the cops who was involved
00:55:51
in, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.
00:55:53
But then, is it too in your face?
00:55:55
I think it's a very fine line there.
00:55:56
It is. Because if you do that, then
00:55:58
it's like, oh, it's just cheesy. It's too cheap.
00:56:00
Exactly. So it was really well done.
00:56:02
But something about the reveal. I wanted to pack a little bit
00:56:06
more punch for me. Everything else in the novel
00:56:08
packs such a heavy punch that one I felt didn't.
00:56:13
So maybe that was just me in my perspective, but I got to knock
00:56:17
down the bad guys for it just a little bit.
00:56:19
Maybe if you would had a scene where.
00:56:22
Titus had already deduced who it was, but the guy doesn't realize
00:56:26
that he had deduced to. So you're you actually meet the
00:56:28
guy and then like you're you slowly are revealed to that this
00:56:31
go, this is the guy, who is it? Instead of like we got the
00:56:34
opposite where he shows up, you know, we know he's at this house
00:56:39
and then the guy shows up and there's a, you know, a fight
00:56:41
breaks out. So I don't know.
00:56:43
I think maybe maybe what I'm getting at is one other misstep
00:56:48
by the killer. Would have been like that
00:56:51
missing link, right? That would have helped us get
00:56:55
there a little bit more if there was one other obvious misstep
00:56:59
like that. Not a smoking gun per se, but
00:57:03
like one other hint that came through and paid off that we
00:57:07
already knew about, I think. Not the truck key.
00:57:12
And like going through the logs at the very end.
00:57:14
You know something else. Yeah, all that was kind of cool
00:57:17
though. Actually.
00:57:18
I forgot I did like that part. When we were forgot, we were
00:57:21
piercing it all together because he was the truck driver, so he
00:57:23
looked at the logs. That was very suspenseful when
00:57:27
we were doing that. All right, I'm stepping back
00:57:30
from it all. I'm going 3, 1/2 because of it.
00:57:32
I'm giving it the half point back.
00:57:34
Okay. All right, what about the good
00:57:36
guys? I wish I can give it extra.
00:57:38
I'm a 5. Yeah, that should.
00:57:40
Be a six or seven. It's a 5 like purely because of
00:57:43
Titus. You know, you can throw in his
00:57:45
brother and his father, his father, some of the other like,
00:57:49
you know, the dispatcher, you know Rita is his Carla and some
00:57:55
of his deputies. Yeah.
00:57:57
They're they're really cool and I thought they were really nice,
00:58:00
you know, side characters, so. And I'm I'm glad it wasn't a
00:58:03
crooked cop story in the end, like.
00:58:05
Let's make it one of the white. Cops.
00:58:06
Who was the bad guy all along helping the last wolf, You know,
00:58:10
I'm glad, I'm glad I gave that half point back to bad guys, cuz
00:58:13
it could have very easily been that and it would have been
00:58:15
cheesy like you said, setting. What about the setting?
00:58:20
Sharon County. Tell me about it.
00:58:21
What's your score? I mean.
00:58:25
You know, it's it's becoming cliche to say that like Virginia
00:58:28
or Sharon County was a character in this novel, but for this it
00:58:32
truly was. And I felt that Shawn had really
00:58:35
done a good job of of placing us there.
00:58:38
Everything was described to down to how the streets looks, you
00:58:43
know, the what, what, how, what was going on in the flag
00:58:47
factory, what was going on at the the fish house, you know,
00:58:51
the food that people were eating, you know how people
00:58:54
drove. You know, every single little
00:58:56
minutia to really paint the picture of what this town was,
00:59:00
was there. And I think he did a great job
00:59:02
at it. So it's got to be a 5.
00:59:04
I I agree. Couldn't say better.
00:59:06
I'll just add one detail. Even from the very beginning,
00:59:09
we're clued into the type of landscape with small wines.
00:59:13
Like his house growing up when his mother was still alive was
00:59:17
the first one that actual had a foundation.
00:59:20
You know, it wasn't a movable, you know, a trailer house.
00:59:23
And this is like you're already getting a sense of what this
00:59:26
community is like, how his family has has worked pretty
00:59:30
hard and and gotten themselves a little bit higher than everyone
00:59:33
else, which is going to lead towards more of the resentment
00:59:35
once he gets in a position of power as the sheriff.
00:59:39
So you're using the landscape, using small little details of
00:59:43
the buildings, the homes, the businesses to really paint a
00:59:46
picture. Yeah, it's almost as if Virginia
00:59:51
is. Is a character in the story, and
00:59:54
each of the other characters have a unique relationship to
00:59:57
it. So five out of five on the
01:00:00
setting. These scores are pretty high,
01:00:03
but before we wrap it up, we gotta judge a cover by the book.
01:00:08
Let me ask you, Chris, what do you think of the cover of All
01:00:12
the Sinners Bleed? Yeah, so there's one cover, and
01:00:16
then there's I found another one online when I just happened to
01:00:19
be like, searching something. They both have pictures of trees
01:00:22
one has like this Blood Moon, which I think is referenced in
01:00:26
the story at some point, right? Maybe.
01:00:30
I don't know, probably because his writing is so descriptive,
01:00:34
but I don't specifically recall it.
01:00:37
And there's this other one. Where's this?
01:00:38
It's like this tree, this top of this hill with clouds.
01:00:44
I guess they're supposed to be both.
01:00:46
Very ominous. I've never seen that one before.
01:00:50
I don't know where that is. I I've never seen that cover.
01:00:53
It popped up when I I just Google searched all the centers
01:00:57
bleed and it. Pumped up all right.
01:01:01
So I guess both of these, you know that tree is going for the
01:01:04
Willow tree that they find, but this is it's that's in a
01:01:08
clearing in a bigger forest, not in a clearing like around the
01:01:12
mountains. Yeah, that's not how I pictured
01:01:16
the Willow tree, to be honest. That is definitely not a Willow
01:01:20
tree in the main, it's it's just a tree.
01:01:23
It's just some sort of tree. So I like, I think I know where
01:01:27
they were trying to go with it. I don't think it landed very
01:01:31
well. So this is actually probably
01:01:32
like my least favorite part of the book is the cover I'm going
01:01:36
to. Yeah, I think for me two is a
01:01:40
little harsh though I will say the idea was good to include a
01:01:45
tree and the sun. Yeah, I don't.
01:01:49
Maybe 2.5 I I give you half credit.
01:01:54
Yeah, I I think something like that.
01:01:57
I I think I'm going to go 3.5 just because I do like the
01:02:01
composition of it and I see the text also using the hues of the
01:02:07
sun, the the blood sun, the Reds, the orange, the yellows.
01:02:11
So I kind of like that, I almost feel like.
01:02:15
A Willow tree could have helped this one even.
01:02:17
Maybe maybe a building I feel like or a badge?
01:02:22
A badge building something. That represents that statue that
01:02:27
was something interesting. You don't wanna honor the statue
01:02:30
though, is the thing. Yeah, true.
01:02:33
I guess the badge. Or like the flag factory like
01:02:37
that would have been cool to see like like what that is or or the
01:02:41
fish house or or you know water some sort of water like this is
01:02:44
very aquatic. These are watermen.
01:02:47
So the fact that we don't get that but depicted on this is
01:02:52
interesting so. Yeah, I think even a house could
01:02:55
have done it just because of some of the most homey scenes
01:02:59
were when he was with his father, or with Darlene or with
01:03:02
Marquis at the house. A badge may be playing something
01:03:06
with the sun and the badge interacting.
01:03:09
Any sort of religious iconography, you know, Would you
01:03:11
want to throw that in there? I think so.
01:03:14
I think because one because of the title and 2:00 because of
01:03:17
the importance in the story of Titus's struggle with faith in
01:03:21
such a hard world. Right.
01:03:23
I really think that could have come up and I like how the title
01:03:26
we didn't we didn't talk about that is a play on what the the
01:03:32
Reverend. The the snake raising Crazy guy
01:03:36
says only the sinners bleed and Titus realizes everyone bleeds
01:03:43
because we're. All because everyone's the
01:03:44
sinners. Yeah, all the sinners bleed
01:03:46
exactly. So I think playing up on the
01:03:48
religious iconography, the physical landscape, not just the
01:03:52
the sun in the sky, but the physical landscape of Sharon
01:03:55
County and maybe the badge and police iconography, I think I
01:03:59
think would have improved the cover, but.
01:04:01
I'm going to go 3 1/2 because I like the composition, I like the
01:04:04
layout. I think it works, but it might
01:04:06
not entirely land so. OK, what about your free space,
01:04:13
bro? Free space.
01:04:16
I'm of course I want to give it to Titus.
01:04:18
Right? Like he's one of the most well
01:04:21
described, well built protagonists we've had in a book
01:04:25
lately. Sometimes the thriller genres we
01:04:28
cover. Protagonist can get a little bit
01:04:30
flat, you know, they're always this military background,
01:04:35
Killer, assassin, try kind of like a spy.
01:04:40
And I think Titus just is so much more than than that.
01:04:43
He's definitely not just a flat 1 dimensional character, so I
01:04:46
want to give it to him, but I'll also throw his father in there.
01:04:49
I love the little quips from the father, whether it's words of
01:04:52
advice, words of encouragement, or even just being present for a
01:04:56
son. And his longing for Marquis to
01:04:58
come home as well. I think I love everything about
01:05:01
the Crown family. Well, you took mine, so I gotta
01:05:04
come up with another one. Who's doing that?
01:05:07
You are. I gotta go first.
01:05:08
In the future. We kind of talked about the
01:05:12
setting. We talked about Virginia.
01:05:15
Well, I could take it back. I can give you Titus and his
01:05:18
father and I'll take the school shooting scene, the opening
01:05:22
scene. You know, I think, like, I got
01:05:25
to give a winner just to having the braveness to put some of
01:05:29
this stuff in in a novel and put it all out there and what you
01:05:36
believe in, You know, because there's a difference in between
01:05:40
putting stuff like this into a novel than putting, like, what
01:05:42
you think about China and what you think about or, you know,
01:05:46
how you feel about the war in Ukraine, how you feel about our
01:05:50
interactions with terrorists. So yeah, I I got to, I think I
01:05:54
just got to give it to Sean for, you know, constantly iterating,
01:05:58
coming up with banging stories and being able to put himself
01:06:03
fully into a story and and not not be ashamed of what he wants
01:06:06
to talk about. So that's what I got.
01:06:08
That's what I'll give it to. Perfect free space, perfect
01:06:11
winner right there, which brings your total to 43 1/2.
01:06:17
My total to 45 out of 50. So pretty good scores on the
01:06:21
Thriller Pod Scorecard. Yep, Yep.
01:06:24
But Chris, it makes me wonder. We didn't have a scorecard back
01:06:26
when we covered Blacktop Wasteland.
01:06:30
How do you think it stacks up against that book?
01:06:33
Do you have a favorite out of the two?
01:06:35
I'm kind of curious. I think I like blacktop waste
01:06:38
and a little bit more cuz I like.
01:06:41
I like racing. I like the driving aspect of it.
01:06:43
That one had a little bit more action there was there was more
01:06:45
definitely more fight scenes in it.
01:06:48
You know it's a heist movie. There's not a lot of killing you
01:06:52
know like if there are deaths in it but it's not like this
01:06:56
gruesome story so like it's it's a little more of an A lighter
01:07:00
read. I I would like I would revisit
01:07:02
black top wasteland before I revisited wanted to go down the
01:07:06
hall of. Putting myself through this
01:07:08
again because some of these killings are pretty intense.
01:07:12
It's heavy. So yeah, I think I gotta go.
01:07:16
It's a slight, very slight though.
01:07:18
I think I 100% agree. I think Black Top Wasteland is
01:07:22
the more enjoyable, read, rereadable novel.
01:07:28
But I do think All The Sinners Bleed is a better piece of
01:07:31
fiction. I think it's a better piece of
01:07:33
literature. Yeah, so.
01:07:36
I like the. Most, I would agree with that,
01:07:37
yeah. They're both incredible, but
01:07:39
they definitely are slightly different and therefore you
01:07:41
can't really compare or rank them 1:00 to 1:00.
01:07:43
So that's how I would put it. Yep.
01:07:47
All right. All right, guys.
01:07:49
So next time on the pod, gotta go hop over onto the Scott
01:07:55
Harvath Season 2. We'll be covering Deadfall.
01:07:59
Have a couple pods for you for part one, Part 2 and.
01:08:02
And we just found out an exclusive interview not
01:08:05
exclusive, but an amazing interview with Brad Thor coming
01:08:08
out coming your way. Next time we're on this one
01:08:11
we're actually going to be jumping into a a Kyle Mills book
01:08:17
in in that and that a fade. So we'll be bringing that to
01:08:19
you. And then also in September we
01:08:22
have code Redman. So get ready and get get get
01:08:25
your reading. Get out there and let us let us
01:08:28
know what you thought of this book.
01:08:29
You know it's it's it's different.
01:08:31
Do you want us to cover more like this?
01:08:33
Should we go back and reread his other two or discuss his other
01:08:36
two? So yeah, let us know.
01:08:38
Again, we need to thank our patrons, our special operator
01:08:40
Sherry F, our special agents Daryl, Kevin, George, Matt,
01:08:43
Dawn, Dennis, Peggy, Catherine, Ray, Bridget, Jeff and Mark.
01:08:47
Please subscribe Break In Review using Apple Podcast.
01:08:50
You can find us.online@thrillerpod.com or on
01:08:52
Twitter and Insta at Thriller Podcast.
01:08:55
And as always, just let Titus be Titus.