Books: Razorblade Tears by S. A. Cosby (2021)

                                                             

“Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid. The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah’s white husband, Derek. Ike had never fully accepted his son but is devastated by his loss. Derek’s father Buddy Lee was almost as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed his father was a criminal. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though, and he wants to know who killed his boy. Ike and Buddy Lee, two ex-cons with little else in common other than a criminal past and a love for their dead sons, band together in their desperate desire for revenge. In their quest to do better for their sons in death than they did in life, hardened men Ike and Buddy Lee will confront their own prejudices about their sons and each other, as they rain down vengeance upon those who hurt their boys.”

Razorblade Tears is an action packed, hard-edged thriller. It’s violent and sometimes disturbing, but it’s also a well written tale of redemption –if you want to view it that way. Because, at times, it was hard to get past some of the “bury your gay” themes (and dumbness of trans character believing that even though she’s treated like shit by her secret lover, she somehow believes that he loves her), especially in horrible ways both Isiah and Derek were murdered (and why they’re killed in such a graphic way). And so you have two homophobic ex-con fathers who only learn “love is love” after their kids are dead and buried. This sort of moralizing becomes tedious after a while, if only because Ike and Buddy Lee are looking for vengeance when they should’ve searched in their hearts for the love they claimed they had for their boys. I mean, both claimed multiple times that they loved them, but both never stopped to ponder what the word meant until it’s too late.

Absolution cannot be handed out like Halloween candy, and it would’ve been great to explore not only Isiah’s and Derek’s love for each other (a triumph of two people who had horrible young lives only to find each other and become successful husbands and fathers themselves), but the women as well –as they’re shortchanged here. But we know where this tale is going to end once Buddy Lee and Ike agree to handle the job the police don’t seem interested in; which I also found interesting. At times it felt like a subplot about why the police are not really investigating the boy’s death was left out. On one hand, you can think that it’s stereotype of cops not caring about a gay couple, but their murders were so violent, so horrible that you can easily see there was more to their deaths. It seems so weird no one on the police force felt really compelled to solve it. So was a subplot taken out or did Cosby not think of it? Also, in the end, it was not too difficult for the men to piece all the puzzle parts together.

So I’m of two minds here, as I was entertained by this book, but felt that Ike and Buddy Lee’s realization that they did love their gay kids, who were married and had a surrogate daughter, came a little too easily, it was too pat. And the less I mention the convenience and coincidence of the ending, the better I’ll feel. Still, I won’t say don’t read Razorblade Tears, because it is well done, but I did feel a bit icky about some of the themes that S.A. Cosby was foisting upon the reader.