Gay Revenge

 “Razorblade Tears”by S. A. Cosby, 2021

This is a revenge / hate fantasy mixed up with political fiction. I read it because I heard the author interviewed on NPR about his new semi-political book “All the Sinners Bleed,” which I couldn't find in the library yet. Cosby is a dark-skinned liberal living in Virginia and happy with the South. Why I don't know, given his stories. This book is centered on the murders of two gay men who were married with a child. A white-supremacist, homophobic motorcycle gang is the prime suspect. This criminal gang, the Rare Breed, is over-the-top homicidal, with a blonde, brutal 'Viking' running the crew on his ape-hanger Harley. Yeah, stereotypical.

The story is set in Red Hill, a rural town/area 30 miles south of Richmond, Virginia. It's two lead characters are both ex-cons – one, Ike, who has secretly killed 7 people and is now 'going straight.' He's running a lawn-care business with 14 employees and still visualizes the joint. On top of that, he's dark-skinned, so he's a rare recidivism success story. Very rare. The other part of this ebony and ivory picture is Buddy Lee, a humorous 'red-neck' living in a trailer park who you might as well call Bobby Lee for all the Confederate glory that will give you. These two form a “Lethal Weapon” pair who, incidentally, are the fathers of these two dead boys. The formerly homophobic fathers are trying to make things right after treating their sons like crap. Buddy also gets lessons in his bigot talk from Ike.

The police are useless per usual and have suspended the case with no leads, so Ike and Buddy Lee take it upon themselves to do a Liam Niesen. They want to find out whodunit, no matter what … which kinda turns into a suicide run. There is a trans-sexual girl involved – so hip – and a “has-to-run-with-the-kid-to-a-hidden-location” kind of wife. There's a wealthy local gun-runner and dealer in the mix and a hidden protagonist who engages in murder-for-hire. Some young 'blue Anarchists' are also possible authors of the crime, a liberal take that is unbelievable and stupid. It's a pretty obvious whodunit, so the real story is how the killers will be brought to vigilante justice given all the forces arrayed against them. Ike and Buddy Lee are experienced and clever, so it is at times a battle of old versus young and dumb.

The political heart of the book is the issue of gayness. Of most insight is how so many African-Americans in Virginia look down on gay people - their own neighbors, sons, daughters and relations. A scene in a barbershop brings this out. Ike and Buddy Lee's regrets about how they treated their sons take up much soapy time.  It speaks to the years of machismo and sexism, religious conservatism, rural economics and right-wing politics that soak the South on both sides of the color line. Like any revenge fantasy that substitutes for reality, the best part of the book is seeing the shit-bags get it. In real life, they usually don't, which is why the placebo 'hero' revenge genre is so huge.

Most of the book engages in various conventions. There is nothing surprising about that, as conventions are what motor all the crime genres. In most hands, the crime narrative is basically a conservative morality tale about Evil with a capital E. So this is a bit refreshing, even though doled out at the hands of two former lumpen ex-cons, not the Pink Pistols or the sons' gay friends. You can call it a 'male savior' story.

Murders of gay people have risen in the last few years due to the rise of fascistic groups and politics. In Virginia there have been shootings at gay bars. Virginia also passed a law against using the 'gay panic' defense used to justify violence against gays and lesbians. Yet the defense was successful in Virginia in 2022 in one murder according to the Advocate. In 2020 a gay Latino was murdered by 3 thugs. The rising stats are given in the book by a gay rights organization in Richmond.

An exciting, cinematic book that treads familiar ground, but throws a charge at anti-gay ideas and violence.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “California Upholds Ban on Gay Marriage,” “Russia, Snowden, Stoli and the Gay Movement,” “Pride,” “Fortunes of Feminism” (Fraser); “Freedom Socialist,” “A Bright Room Called Day” (Kushner).

And I got it at a local library. School libraries are being closed in the Houston School District by the Republican-led state apparatus. Reading is a sin! Certainly this book will be 'black-listed' before that.

Red Frog

August 8, 2023