S.A. Cosby on Interviewing an FBI Agent, Making Plans, and Family Relationships in All The Sinners Bleed

This week on The Maris Review, S.A. Cosby joins Maris Kreizman to discuss All The Sinners Bleed, out now from Flatiron Books.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts.

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From the episode:

SC: A friend of a friend got me an interview with someone who was a former FBI agent. They don’t wanna be publicly identified, and so I can’t reveal my source, but talking to them was really interesting. Some of the stuff that’s in the book where Titus talks about string theory as a theory of how to solve a crime, and how you’ve just gotta keep pulling at the threads until it comes apart, or you rip it apart.

The thing that I took from those conversations is that the people in the FBI or any high level law enforcement organization, they’re not superheroes. They’re not good at what they do because they’re better than anybody else, but a lot of them are really driven and a lot of them are really disciplined to the detriment of their personal lives. It’s like you have a genius, like you have Mozart and he’s an incredible composer, musician, but he’s a terrible friend and he’s an awful boyfriend. Because they’re myopic in the way they see the world. They can only see the world through the prism of this incredible skill that they have.

One thing the guy told me is that, when you’ve been doing this for a while, you don’t trust anybody because everybody lies. Everybody lies. And I was like, that’s such a powerful but sad thing. And I think Titus has a little bit of that. Like, he loves his dad, he loves his brother, he loves Darlene, his girlfriend, but he doesn’t a hundred percent trust anybody, really. It’s hard for him to trust people until the very end of the book.

MK: This segues perfectly into how Titus describes his own religion. He no longer believes in God, but like you’ve got the closet that’s perfectly organized. You’ve got his routines, you’ve got him trying to follow the rules. It seems like he’s always just grasping at control above all else.

SC: Yeah, it’s funny. He’s one of these people who is really trying to impose order and structure on an indifferent universe. You know, my mom used to say, if you wanna make God laugh, make a plan. And Titus is one of these people that continuously makes plans. He’s trying so hard. He had an event in his youth where his mother passed away, and he blames himself even though he shouldn’t. His mother had a disease and I leave it sort of vague, but you get the feeling that she didn’t go to the doctor and she sort of relied on faith healing until it was too late.

And he feels like, I was 12 years old. I should have made her go to the doctor. I should have stepped in and did something. He had to be the adult in the house because at the time his father was drinking and so on and so forth. I think for me, one of the things about this book, the serial murder case and the racial politics and dynamics are the honey. But the medicine is really this journey of self-reflection for Titus. By the end of the book, I hope he’s in a place where he realizes he doesn’t have to fix everybody and everything.

And I think that’s something that he bears his weight. He’s a self-identified penitent, and his penance is he has to fix everything for everyone. And Marquis, his brother, tells him that you don’t do anything for anybody. You know, why are you here? You’re not gonna stay here. You are too much and too smart for this town. And Titus is like, no, this is my responsibility. I have to do. If I’m not gonna do, who is? And so, he goes on this journey of self-discovery, that he realizes that his life isn’t healthy, and maybe the way he’s lived his life has held him back. Hopefully, if he makes it to the end, he’ll realize that the only person you need to be responsible for really, unless you have children, is yourself.

MK: Titus’s journey, trying to do good in law enforcement from the inside, is very similar to his father’s path of becoming very religious to atone for his mistakes as a father. And it’s the irony of turning to institutions that are thoroughly corrupt in almost a similar way, the hypocrisy built into both law enforcement and the church.

SC: Yeah, I think Titus and his dad seek order and seek absolution. And the way to do that is to do it in institutions that already exist. Places where we already know the rules. For his dad, it was the church. I think his dad understood the church. He may not have agreed with it all the time, but he understood it. It gave him purpose. For Titus, there’s the sense that he’s like a knight errant. He really wants to protect people. He really wants to do the right thing, and he does beat himself up. He blames himself for his mom.

And so this idea of going into police work, especially when he went into the FBI, it was this idea like, I’ve seen what the local law enforcement is like, how corrupt that is. I’m gonna go to the next level, I’m gonna be an FBI agent, and I’m gonna use that because that’s a more productive, less corrupt system. And then he runs smack into something that makes him realize that corruption is at the root of it. I don’t wanna give it away, but something happens while he’s an FBI agent. It makes him realize, oh yeah. If you are in any form of law enforcement, you definitely are above the law. You can get away with just about anything.

And so as he goes on in the book, I like to think of it like a house. Titus thinks you can repair the house of law enforcement. He’s a little naive in that respect because he feels like if I just try hard enough, if I just make sure everybody’s treated equally, everything will be alright. It’s sort of like putting spackle on the walls of a house that has a rotten foundation. It doesn’t matter how much painting you do, how much you clean the floors, the house is gonna collapse from the inside out. And so I think Titus understands that toward the end of the book. It’s a difficult reality for him to accept. I think to a certain extent his father gets that.

There’s a scene in the book where a really shiesty minister is rude to Titus’s father and Titus stands up for him. He calls him out. And I think his father realized, okay, I wanna do these good things, but maybe this nation isn’t a place to do it. And I think it’s interesting they both come to that epiphany. But the thing I like about Titus is that as much as disdain as he has for religion and church, he doesn’t ever look down on his dad. He doesn’t agree with him, but because he loves him, he’s not gonna let somebody just talk some smack to him either.

I love their relationship. I love their father-son bond, but also their friendship. In my previous books the father-son relationships have been very fraught with toxicity and pain and trauma. It was fun to write this one. Albert’s the kind of dad I think anybody would like. He’s funny, he’s stubborn, but he loves his sons, both of them equally.

MK: He cooks.

SC: Yeah, he cooks all the time. He loves to cook. He likes to make peach tea, he loves his boys. Ultimately the three of them, Titus, Marquis, and Albert, love each other very much. You know, speaking frankly, I think it’s important to show that in black male relationships sometimes that you can love each other in a healthy way that’s not toxic, that’s not dependent on outdated modes of masculinity. You can just love each other. You can just care about each other.

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Recommended Reading:

Red London by Alma Katsu • Like a Sister by Kellye Garrett • What’s Done in the Darkness by Laura McHugh

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S. A. Cosby is an Anthony Award-winning writer from Southeastern Virginia. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Razorblade Tears and Blacktop Wasteland, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, was a New York Times Notable Book, and was named a best book of the year by NPR, The Guardian, and Library Journal, among others. When not writing, he is an avid hiker and chess player. His latest novel is called All the Sinners Bleed.