by S.A. Cosby (Amazon's #3 Best Book of 2020) ★★★★★
On the surface, Beauregard “Bug” Montague feels like the trope we’ve seen a hundred times in movies and books -- the “best wheelman in three states”, who’s trying to leave a life of crime behind and run a legitimate business so he can be a husband and father first. But damn if life won’t just cooperate with those plans, and damn if Bug (and Blacktop Wasteland) doesn’t turn out to be a lot more under the surface.
What seems like it will be a surface-level “one last job” crime caper ends up developing characters with a lot more depth than you typically get from the genre. While there are plenty of very bad people in this novel to act as antagonists, it also feels like the truest antagonist is just “life”. Cosby does an incredible and believable job of helping the reader feel the financial stresses of life closing in around Bug -- whether it’s his son’s braces, or a business that’s just scraping by, or unexpected nursing home bills for his mother -- while he fights to make good choices against what he believes is his own bad nature.
While the plot rockets along with a pace that makes me certain this will be optioned for a movie (it’s already in the works), Cosby’s writing and character development add depth that make this my clear favorite book this year. He uses similes that made me grin (“The headliner was drooping like a stroke victim’s cheek”) and hard-nosed prose that made Bug a badass you could root for (“Having a gun nearby was the only way you could pretend to relax...They were like good friends who were always down to do bad things.”). Beneath it all, this is essentially a character study of a flawed man constantly tempted by the wrong things, who ultimately has less faith in himself than he should.
As much as I enjoyed The Mountains Wild, nothing was going to displace Blacktop Wasteland from atop my “Best Of” list this year. This is one I’ll read again some day.
Previous Best of 2020: #2 - The Mountains Wild