A Story of Guilt and Second Chances

Two fathers, two lost sons, and one shared goal: when Ike Randolph learns of the murder of his son and his son’s husband, Derek, a Black former convict’s world collapses. The distance that has grown between father and son weighs most heavily. Ike had never truly accepted his son’s homosexuality.

Also Derek’s white father Buddy Lee carries the burden of his past and his guilt. Like Ike, he sat behind bars; like Ike, he could not accept his gay son while he was alive. Buddy Lee still has connections to the underworld and will stop at nothing to uncover who killed the two men.

Action-packed revenge thriller

Together the fathers set out to track down the killers. Along the way they encounter not only violence and criminal entanglements but also their own failings. The hope of delivering justice to their sons, even in death, keeps driving them forward.

“Die Rache der Väter” binds an action-packed revenge thriller with a story about fractured relationships, late realizations, and second chances. At its core lies the question of how far two men will go for justice—and whether guilt can still be confronted if an apology comes too late.

The novel stood on Barack Obama’s Summer Reading List as well as Deutschlandfunk’s Crime Best List. Originally published in 2022 in German, “Die Rache der Väter” is now available as a paperback (Amazon affiliate link). A reading sample can be found on the publisher’s site.

The author S. A. Cosby resides in the U.S. state of Virginia and is a writer as well as an avid chess player. In 2019 he won the Anthony Award for Best Short Story. His 2021 novel “Blacktop Wasteland,” published by ars vivendi, earned the LA Times Book Prize and rose to No. 2 on the Crime List.