My Darkest Prayer

 My Darkest Prayer by S. A. Cosby (2022) 267 pp

Southern noir is a genre I haven’t tried before and this book is a page-turner. Cosby has a knack for putting you in the action and action is the key word here. Jack Reacher would feel right at home with protagonist Nathan Waymaker. In a homage to author Walter Mosley, Waymaker has named his hot-rod pickup “black betty” and the author has taken on the mantle of Mosley and I dare say Chester Himes and Donald Goines when it comes to graphic descriptions of fighting and fornicating. Between the seemingly endless fisticuffs, Cosby offers a glimpse of the human bonds (and foibles) of small-town southern life—regardless of skin color. However, he is not shy about calling out the unbridled racism of the South, although he interweaves the sociology with the story line without distracting from the narrative.  And the story is, as one of the characters might say, a humdinger and about as implausible as you can imagine. The reader is subjected to many murders, corrupt law officers, gangsters, and old scores to settle.  Waymaker works (and resides) in his cousin’s funeral home and has a vibrant past, biracial in a small town (parents murdered), former marine and ex-sheriff’s deputy. Like the early Mosley characters, Waymaker is an unofficial “fixer”, the go-to guy when answers can not be found via the traditional route. And like Mosley’s Easy Rawlins sometime sidekick Mouse, Waymaker has a hard partner capable of merciless violence -- Skunk. As with many crime fiction stories this one wraps up with gratuitous non-stop carnage. Cosby is an interesting writer; he has a great ear for dialog, and a fun way with home-spun homilies – clever without ladling on the saccharine. I almost felt I was reading two stories, the biography of Waymaker and the separate world of his noir adventure.