Black American writers are popular. Percival Everett, for example, was a finalist for the Booker Prize in 2022 with The Trees (Punishmentrecently published in French by Actes Sud) and the adaptation of its American Fiction was nominated for the very recent Oscars. As for SA Cosby, his two previous novels — The forgotten roads And Angerpublished by Sonatine — have won tons of awards and will soon be brought to the cinema… in addition to being highly recommended by former President Obama.
It must be said straight away that Cosby likes disturbing subjects and that the writing of this cantor of the “New South” is astonishingly powerful, just like the character, who is built like an American football player. Whilee Anger was based on the revenge of two fathers following the murder of the mixed gay couple formed by their sons, The blood of the innocent features Titus Crown, the black sheriff of the small county of Charon, in deep Virginia.
The book begins abruptly as this former FBI agent confronts an armed young black man who has just shot dead a local college professor in the middle of class. With his team, Crown secured the perimeter and confronted the madman when one of his men panicked, shot and mortally wounded the assailant as he moved towards the police. In the small town where everyone knows each other, there is consternation. But there’s worse… Before succumbing, the young assailant had time to denounce the man he had just shot and the sheriff discovered very disturbing videos in the teacher’s phone: we see the teacher and a masked accomplice carrying out torture on teenagers. THE ” rednecks » locals cry, of course, of lying conspiracy and disinformation, but when the sheriff uncovers a pedophile ring and finds the graves of six young victims, all black, the tone changes.
Pumped up, Titus Crown begins to track down the murdered teacher’s accomplice and, in the process, new mutilated bodies appear all over the county. Titus will have to delve into his deepest reserves to face all those who await him at the slightest turn.
It’s a sordid story, obviously, that Cosby tells us in tight, high-speed writing that the translation renders very well. With an extremely tense social subtext threatening to explode at any moment, the writer succeeds in making us feel, with infinite detail, the rift that is tearing apart this corner of the United States where there is a risk of playing out once again, in November’s presidential election, the fate of America.
The portrait of this society steeped in stubborn prejudices and stuck to its positions is as distressing as it is credible. All this rings all the more true as the novel is based on solid characters and a ruthless plot built on a past presaging a future that is ultimately not so rosy. Tough, the South.