Razorblade Tears

Cosby writes gritty, gothic noir stories set in the American South. His protagonists are typically angry men with dark pasts who are capable of great violence and driven by a sense of duty. In many ways, Cosby’s work is typical of hardboiled detective fiction and crime noir, which are genres that explore the seedy underbellies of society and feature amoral characters and flawed, disillusioned protagonists; he is following in the footsteps of writers like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, and Mickey Spillane.

However, particularly in Razorblade Tears, Cosby shows a willingness to engage with issues that are atypical to the genre. Most hardboiled fiction upholds traditional ideas of masculinity and has a history of insensitive portrayal of marginalized characters; The Maltese Falcon, for example, has a gay character who is treated as a deviant and used as comic relief in relation to the macho protagonist. In contrast, Cosby sets his story in a world populated with gay, lesbian, and transgender characters and foregrounds those character’s struggles, While a traditional hardboiled protagonist might struggle with addiction or infidelity, the dual protagonists of Razorblade Tears struggle with their bigoted attitudes as a central character flaw.

Cosby subverts the trope of the classic tough guy. On one hand, Buddy Lee and Ike fit the mold of the macho protagonist. Buddy Lee is an uneducated white man with casually racist tendencies. Ike is a Black man and a former gang member who returns easily to disposing bodies. However, Cosby depicts them as far more vulnerable—and pitiable in their ignorance—than writers like Hammett or Mickey Spillane. The reader watches these two men grapple with their own insecurities and fears while they investigate the murders of the two sons who were utterly unlike them.