Blacktop Wasteland

A New York Times Notable Books of 2020 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.“Sensationally good―new, fresh, real, authentic, twisty, with characters and dilemmas that will break your heart. More than recommended.” ―Lee ChildA 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.
Amazon.com Review
On the face of it,
Blacktop Wasteland is one in a long list of books riffing on a popular trope: the career criminal who wants just one last bite at the cherry, one last job to set him up for peaceful, affluent retirement. Beauregard “Bug” Montage however, is an African American man, living in the rural south, which leaves him a few steps behind the starting line when it comes to getting ahead. He can’t afford to dream about Mai Tais on the beach. He needs money just to pay for his kid’s braces, to keep his mother from being evicted from her nursing home, and to pay the back rent on his auto body shop, which will be sold to the developers if he can’t catch up. There’s a part of him—driving his Dad’s old racing car, the Duster—that became legendary as the best getaway driver in three states. That part knows what it wants to do: take part in a heist. But the pull between poverty, paternity, and posterity is agonizing: does he want to be Beauregard, the family man flying right, or does he want to be Bug, firing up the Duster to follow in his Dad’s footsteps?
Blacktop Wasteland is a slick, rural, Southern noir caper threaded with what the author has referred to as “tragic masculinity,” which means it will thrill you and break your heart all at the same time.
—Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Book Review