Blacktop Wasteland
A Novel
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4.6 • 24 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner • New York Times Notable Book • NPR’s Best Books of the Year • BookPage’s #1 Mystery and Suspense of the Year • Sun Sentinel’s #1 Best Mystery of the Year
“I loved Blacktop Wasteland...[A] fast-paced, bareknuckle thriller.” -Stephen King
“A roaring, full-throttle thriller, crackling with tension and charm.” -The New York Times Book Review
"One of the year's strongest novels." -Sun Sentinel
A husband, a father, a son, a business owner...And the best getaway driver east of the Mississippi.
Beauregard “Bug” Montage is an honest mechanic, a loving husband, and a hard-working dad. Bug knows there’s no future in the man he used to be: known from the hills of North Carolina to the beaches of Florida as the best wheelman on the East Coast.
He thought he'd left all that behind him, but as his carefully built new life begins to crumble, he finds himself drawn inexorably back into a world of blood and bullets. When a smooth-talking former associate comes calling with a can't-miss jewelry store heist, Bug feels he has no choice but to get back in the driver's seat. And Bug is at his best where the scent of gasoline mixes with the smell of fear.
Haunted by the ghost of who he used to be and the father who disappeared when he needed him most, Bug must find a way to navigate this blacktop wasteland...or die trying.
Like Ocean’s Eleven meets Drive, with a Southern noir twist, S. A. Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland is a searing, operatic story of a man pushed to his limits by poverty, race, and his own former life of crime.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Beauregard “Bug” Montage has a normal life, raising a family and running a car repair shop. Precious few folks know that Bug used to be a getaway driver, speeding notorious criminals away from their heists. He’s gone straight—but after a stroke of bad luck, the past comes calling. Reading this high-octane thrill ride is as exciting as a car chase through downtown streets. Bug is both sympathetic and ruthless, troubled and caring—basically, the perfect antihero. Author S. A. Cosby isn’t afraid to confront the racial issues Bug faces as a Black man in the South and how those experiences have affected his entire family’s relationship to crime. Whether you want to delve into the economic collapse of small-town Appalachia, a country’s mythic love of the automobile, or just a whiplash-paced crime novel, Blacktop Wasteland has what you’re craving.
