Blacktop Wasteland

Blacktop Wasteland is a heist novel that centers on the wheel man, the getaway driver, like a more realistic version of Edgar Wright's Baby Driver but just as exciting. I don't know anything about S.A. Cosby, but I assume he must be a car enthusiast because his descriptions of engine mechanics and driving seem to come from a place of personal knowledge rather than just research.Cosby builds the novel on the classic noir setup. Beauregard "Bug" Montage, got off to a bad start in life doing petty crimes as a teenager until a job gone wrong ended him up in juvenile detention. By the time Bug got out, his father, Anthony (aka "Ant), had disappeared, never to be seen again. The only thing Ant left Bug was the souped-up Plymouth Duster they both loved. Bug turned it into a legendary street-racing machine and had the chops to drive it like no one else could.After the stint in juvie, Bug went straight. He bought an old garage and turned it into an auto repair shop. He remarried. (The first marriage had long since dissolved; they were both teens at the time.) And he had a successful business until a rival shop run by a franchise called Precision moved into town and undercut his prices.Because he couldn't beat Precision's prices, he lost customers and fell behind on his mortgage payments. Meanwhile, his son Darren needs glasses. His other son Javon had to get braces. His daughter Ariel, from the first marriage, is smart enough she could go to college and make something of herself if only she could afford the tuition. To top it all off, his mother is in a convalescent home, and he's just learned that there's a discrepancy with her Medicaid policy for which he now owes the government $48,360.Bug is in desperate straights financially when Ronnie Sessions shows back up in his life. Ronnie is a redneck drug addict and career criminal who's always looking for the next score. He's also the screw-up who masterminded the job-gone-wrong that put Bug in juvenile detention way back when. But this time he's got a foolproof scheme. Ronnie's girlfriend Jenny is working at a jewelry store that is going to be temporarily holding $500,000-worth of uncut diamonds, and with her help they are going to take advantage of that window of opportunity to steal the diamonds. Reggie knows a guy who can fence the goods, giving them a clean $250,000 which Ronnie, Bug, and the gunman on the team, Quan, can split three ways. Eighty thousand dollars would go a long way toward solving Bug's problems.But he quit the life. He has a wife and two sons he loves, a daughter he rarely sees but cares about, a difficult mother to take care of, an employee (and childhood friend) named Kelvin... he can't blow it all by getting caught or killed in a holdup. Bug's wife Kia tries to convince him, instead, to sell the beloved Duster, which is legendary in the county and would bring a very high price. Bug can't let go of that link to his father, though. So he tells himself that if he fully takes charge of the job, checks out everything personally, makes sure absolutely nothing can go wrong, then it's just one last job, and he'll be out of the life for good.You know this story, right? The "one last job and then I'm out" story? It's a good one. A classic, in fact.Ronnie and Quan both promised Bug they would stay away from coke for the duration of the job, but they lied. Ronnie also lied about the value of the diamonds, which was really more like $3,000,000. (If you were smarter than Ronnie, it would make you wonder why jewels that valuable would be passing through a rinky-dink, small-town jewelry store and who would be behind it.) In fairness to Ronnie, though, there's no way he could have known the fat lady who was Jenny's boss at the store was also a stone-cold killer. I won't tell you anything about what happens next except for the one thing you already know -- once the robbery starts, everything goes to hell big time, real fast.S.A. Cosby is a terrific writer. With this novel, he's already in the realm of the likes of Elmore Leonard, Dennis Lehane, and George Pelecanos. The story is peopled with a fully realized cast of characters, the small-town Georgia settings feel lived in, the action sequences and tense encounters are white-knuckle stuff. If you like hard-boiled noir fiction, this one's for you.

When you really love a subgenre, you don’t want to read the same thing over and over again, but you do want to see tweaks and new takes on your cherished tropes. Blacktop Wasteland falls right square in the country noir subgenre. It distinguishes itself from the field not just with execution but with a protagonist who is a wheelman (and all the car chases the choice suggests) and African-American.Bug is a family man. He has two boys with his wife and an older daughter with another woman. He is close with his cousin and his uncle. He is a businessman. He owns a local auto mechanic shop. He is also a criminal. He made the money to buy his double-wide and start the shop with money made working as a wheelman for crews in Virginia and North Carolina. It’s a life he put behind him until the bills start to pile a little too far up and Ronnie frigging Sessions shows up looking for a wheelman. Sessions is “known for two things: his twenty-three Elvis tattoos, and stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down with titanium fasteners.” Bug knows he’s bad news, but he also knows he needs money fast and bad. It goes about as poorly as expected.Bug is a great character. He fits directly into a country noir mold as a guy who “dream of living in a double-wide down a dirt lane. At least it has “running water and a roof that didn’t leak like a sieve. A house where everyone had their own room and there wasn’t a slop bucket in the corner.”Bug is also a hard man and a very competent criminal. Noir fiction is all about “the long drop off the short pier” and “the all-time sure thing that goes bad.” In country noir, there are no piers, “but the people still find a way to fall.” I love the motif, but it can lead to sad sack characters who the passive receptacle to events outside their control. Things will happen outside Bug’s control, but he is not a man who sits easy with the idea of being a product of his environment instead of the other way around.He is quick, vicious, and effective at dealing out violence. He is also a careful, canny criminal. He isn’t just better than good behind the wheel of a car. He knows the business of robbery. He is a competent, cautious planner. And he has the skills to turn a nondescript car into a getaway vehicle, get away in it, then make it disappear.(His pride and joy is his father’s Plymouth Duster, but he is smart enough to not use it for a job. Is there a history with his dad? Of course there is; this is country noir.)Bug’s competence creates his core conflict as a character—a creeping suspicion that wheelman Bug is the real Bug and family man and businessman Bug just an act. When his cousin asks if it feels good prepping for a job, Bug says ‘no’ but is self-aware enough to admit to himself that “It felt better than good. It felt right. It was like he had found a comfortable pair of old shoes that he had thought were lost forever.”Blacktop Wasteland has everything I ask for from a country noir. A solid plot. Violence. Colorful characters. Family drama. Pulp action sensibilities and literary character beats. I have no real quibbles. But while it rises easily above disposal crime fiction, it never quite reaches the literary heights of a Ron Rash or Daniel Woodrell book. And can a written chase scene really compare with well crafted, expensive movie chase?