My Darkest Prayer

I am in love with SA Cosby's worlds and My Darkest Prayer is another brilliant, albeit less polished installment. It's an early work and shorter than his more famous later books, but it crackles just the same. First and foremost, what I love about his stories is his setting. Having spent so much time in Virginia, I love to read about ole Newport News in just about all of them. I went to high school in the Blues so I know exactly the areas he's referencing and it's a thrill that never gets old. Then his relationships. He has such a poetic, and at the same time, real way of describing his characters- their appearances, their back stories, their choices, their actions. All of it.

This protagonist is so powerful- a biracial undertaker- plus a whole lot more- but that's not for me to say. That's for the reader to discover. I loved this undertaker story- my first and I learned a lot about the business. I pass SA's books to any & all folks I meet who love the crime genre. If you haven't read him yet, you must.

SA Cosby writes a solid book. Great characters. Good dialogue. Nice plotting. Solid premise. I enjoy his work a lot.

If I have a single complaint: Dude uses similies like Mormons use sugar.
I like his writing because the prose is languid and interesting, but too often a ham-handed simile takes me right out of the flow. They're frequent and often awkward.

I mean, I guess it's his writing style...but as an editor and former writing instructor, they'd be the first things I'd tell him to work on cutting down.

Also, while I like Nathan Waymaker as a main character, he suffers from the author-insert-wannabe syndrome that so many main characters suffer from. He's stronger than everyone else. He's tougher than everyone else. He's smarter and more well-read than anyone else. He's a former Marine. He gets to have sex with the hot pornstar who is impressed by his sexual ability. Every woman in the book hits on him.

It gets ridiculous.

Otherwise, I'm very much looking forward to his next book.