Two fathers; one black, one white. Two sons; married and murdered. One driving mission: find out who did it, and make them pay.
Ike Randolph got out of jail 15 years ago and has been on the straight and narrow ever since. But cops knocking at a Black man’s door is never a good thing. In this case, it’s the worst thing. Ike’s son Isaiah has been murdered in cold blood, alongside Isaiah’s white husband Derek. Neither Ike nor Derek’s father Buddy Lee had really accepted their sons’ “lifestyles” but each is devastated by the loss, and each desperately wants answers. Together, they decide to team up, get those answers, and wreak vengeance on everyone who had anything to do with the death of their boys.
Buddy Lee and Ike rove all over central Virginia trying to find out who targeted their sons and why. Early on they cross paths with The Rare Breed, a white supremacist motorcycle gang that runs drugs, weapons, and women, and will work as enforcers for those with enough money to pay them. That encounter goes south quickly, and Ike and Buddy Lee suddenly have targets painted on their backs. They know that the Rare Breed is likely behind their sons’ deaths, but the question remains – why? What were Derek and Isaiah getting into that resulted in their execution-style death? As the Breed closes in, threatening Ike’s wife & orphaned granddaughter, Ike & Buddy Lee have to figure out who is pulling the strings on these murderous puppets, and what secret is explosive enough to kill for.
Razorblade Tears is not for the faint of heart. Ike and Buddy Lee both have violent pasts and don’t hesitate to use violence to get answers to their questions. And S.A. Cosby doesn’t shy away from describing that violence in great detail. (There’s a bit with a soil tamper that is now seared into my brain.) If you have a stomach that’s easily turned, you may want to avoid this book. To me, the violence is balanced by Ike & Buddy Lee’s evolutions over the course of the book. We get POV chapters from both of them, and are with them as they realize what their homophobia toward their sons has cost them, and how they missed out on knowing the good men that their sons had become. There’s a moment just before the climax of the story where Buddy Lee tells the bad guy that Buddy Lee’s an ally, and it made me laugh and get a little teary-eyed at the same time. Razorblade Tears is an emotional journey through grief just as much it is a revenge tale. It was the first book I’ve read by S.A. Cosby, and I know it won’t be the last.