
“And all I kept thinking was why did he have to tell me? Why that day? Why couldn’t he have kept that to himself? I didn’t need to know that sh**, right? I kept making it about me. Took me years to understand he told me because even though we didn’t get along, he wanted to let me know he was happy. He wanted to share that with me and I f*ed it up. I let him down.”
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Razorblade Tears is part murder mystery, part revenge story, part family drama and just a piece of excellent fiction. Ike and Buddy Lee are grieving fathers, they have both just lost a son. Both fathers had strained and broken relationships with those sons because they were gay. Neither supported their son in life and are coming to terms with their behavior and the inability to rectify it. And then they meet, and as things tend to do, they get carried away. Carried away by grief and a misguided need to “fix” things. So they decide to solve the murders themselves. And let’s just say, that takes some interesting and aggressive turns.
The relationship between Southern Black man Ike and redneck, white man Buddy Lee is the stuff of great fiction. They start in their respective corners cemented in their beliefs both hardened by their criminal pasts and yet the grief of their losses has cracked them wide open. The arc they each follow is impressive. There is a ton of violence in this one and you need to suspend reality a little to think they would actually get as far as they do and commit all the violence they do without repercussions. The resolution is surprising and wholly satisfying. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐