Flap:
Roman Carruthers left the smoke and fire of his family’s crematory business behind in his hometown of Jefferson Run, Virginia. He is enjoying a life of shallow excess as a financial adviser in Atlanta until he gets a call from his sister, Neveah, telling him their father is in a coma after a hit-and-run accident.
When Roman goes home, he learns the accident may not be what it seems. His brother, Dante, is deeply in debt to dangerous, ruthless criminals. And Roman is willing to do anything to protect his family. Anything.
A financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, Roman must use all his skills to try to save his family while dealing with a shadow that has haunted them all for twenty years: the disappearance of their mother when Roman and his siblings were teenagers. It’s a mystery that Neveah, who has sacrificed so much of her life to hold her family together, is determined to solve once and for all.
As fate and chance and heartache ignite their lives, the Carruthers family must pull together to survive or see their lives turn to ash. Because, as their father counseled them from birth, nothing lasts forever. Everything burns.
S.A Cosby writes like a maestro; he wastes not one word, wastes not one scene, like a music maestro, every chord, every tune, every harmony serves a purpose in the choir. It is akin to an orchestra, you immediately see him using his words, guiding us to a crescendo and it is just so masterful to witness, because the end hymn will always be magnificent; the notes will always leave the hairs on the back of the your neck standing.
In King of Ashes, his latest crime thriller, an eldest son is forced to go back home because their father is in a coma having come to harm by the neighbourhood henchmen so to speak because of the actions of his baby brother. Aside: if you have ever wanted to punch your youngest sibling as the eldest sibling, this book gives you the permission to.
Roman has to go home because his family will fall apart in this latest crises. Decades ago, his mother walked away from the home one morning and never returned, their father was suspected of killing her and has lived with that cloud hanging over him all his life, including suspicions from within his own home. Now he is in a coma, and Roman has to make sure the crematorium business he owns does not fall off because that was their livelihood, the place that saw them through, and has become something of a legacy in the community. Except, Neveah, his sister, is the one that has been running the show alongside their father, younger brother Dante, is busy being the neighbourhood hot boy making all the wrong decisions and still royally fucking everything up. Roman has to keep a level head, and time and again bite his tongue with his siblings who seem to think they know the full story when they do not; his sister, or who seem to think they know just how to handle business when they have no idea; his baby brother.
Ugh! These two idiots annoyed the hell out of me.
But there are family secrets at play, secrets Neveah has no idea about and because of such she is stuck in this quagmire of thoughts about her father, the truth she believes she knows, only there is more, much more to the story.
There is also the matter of the people who put their father in the hospital, the ones whom Roland has to literally get in bed with in order to save his baby brother’s life. Fly after fly in the ointment; throw in the sister of the neighbourhood kingpin who catches feelings for Roman and he for her, and it is a mix of a dastardly tale; a slow and steady combustion that is sure to erupt into an inferno that will blast every single person in its orbit. Even those outside of it will be touched by the ash.
S.A. Cosby is a master storyteller of the genre, he pulls us, the reader and the characters, into a false sense of calm, believing we know everything unfolding on the page, but we have no idea about the moves Roland is making to bring this all to an end and are aptly surprised by the heartaches it leaves in its wake.
There are no innocent ones here, everyone is guilty of something in the end, but there can be only one King to rise out of the ashes and gain a new kingdom.
This is gritty and jarring, heavy and startling. This is what happens when a family keeps a secret, so dark, so deadly it consumes from within. It is that age old saying if you are going to kill the king, you better dig two graves, only, many graves are dug by the time we get to it because everything burns.