All the Sinners Bleed is a 2023 crime novel by S. A. Cosby.
Titus Crowne is the first black sheriff of Charon County, Virginia. Titus intends to make a difference and reform the county's notoriously racist police force. However, after a school shooting leaves beloved teacher Jeff Spearman dead and the shooter Latrell McDonald is killed by Titus's deputies, Titus discovers that the teacher had been the partner of a serial killer targeting black children. Titus must track down the killer, while dealing with the usual array of corrupt politicians, Confederate flag marchers, and black activists who view him as a Category Traitor.
List of tropes applying to this novel:
- Asshole Victim:
- Titus and the police department lose any sympathy for Jeff Spearman after it's discovered he was a serial killer who preyed on children.
- Latrell deconstructs this trope, as while Titus doesn't feel sympathetic towards him for having kept silent on Jeff and the Last Wolf's crimes, he still knows that as a black man shot by the police his death needs to be viewed objectively.
- Elias is brutally murdered by the Last Wolf, but considering what a bigoted Jerkass he had been up to that point, it's difficult to feel sorry for him.
- Category Traitor: Titus is viewed by some black residents - most notably Rev. Jamal Addison's congregation - as an Uncle Tom who turned on the black community by joining law enforcement. Titus doesn't blame them and respects their viewpoint, acknowledging that Charon County's police department fully deserves skepticism.
- Corrupt Politician: Scott Cunningham and his family are prominent local politicians who are as inept as they are corrupt. Scott and Titus despise each other because Titus refuses to let Scott's corrupt behavior slide.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The Last Wolf inflicts several brutal deaths.
- Elias Hillington has a wooden stake shoved up his rectum, is crucified, is stabbed multiple times with a bowie knife, and has his penis flayed.
- Cole Marshall's face is cut off and he's subsequently hanged.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Titus is tormented by guilt over having failed to save a white supremacist's family from their patriarch, who killed them all in a bombing.
- Dirty Cop: Tom Sadler is taking bribes from a local drug dealer to alert him to Titus's planned raids. Titus even speculates he killed Latrell because he knew about Tom's corruption.
- The Fundamentalist: Pastor Elias Hillington is a religious demagogue accurately described as "to the right of David Duke", and preached against the horrors of woke culture and homosexuality.
- Groin Attack: Elias's penis is flayed by the Last Wolf.
- Posthumous Character: Jeff Spearman is introduced as a corpse, but his legacy looms large over the story.
- Red Baron: Titus nicknames Spearman's unknown accomplice the Last Wolf based on his wolf mask.
- Redemption Equals Death: Tom.
- Sinister Minister: Elias, who subtly threatens Titus and is on the whole Obviously Evil. He's even responsible for Royce Lazare becoming a serial killer, having tormented him to insanity for being black.Griselda Barry: He talks an awful lot about God and the Devil, but my mama always said the Devil can quote the good book as well as any angel. And Elias is as close to the Devil as I wanna get.
- Small-Town Tyrant: Discussed. Titus notes how easy it can be for a sheriff to become one, and notes that many of his predecessors were, though he himself tries to avoid it.
- Suicide by Cop: Latrell possibly deliberately provokes Titus's deputies into shooting.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Jeff Spearman was beloved by Charon County's residents, but in secret he was a vicious serial killer who preyed on and tortured black children.
- Would Hurt a Child: Jeff Spearman and his accomplice tortured black children and murdered them, much to everyone's disgust.
