“Beyond Historical Fiction”: A Review of You Will Know Me by My Deeds by Mike Cobb

 (Waterside Productions, 2024). ISBN: 978-1-234567-89-0

Ask anyone from Atlanta about Wayne Williams and the “Atlanta child murders” that claimed 28 lives (children, adolescents, and adults; July 1979 to May 1981) and you’re certain to receive strong responses of fear and uncertainty comparable to those from New Yorkers when asked about the yearlong Son(s) of Sam killings in New York City (July 1976 to July 1977). On the opposite coast, the Night Stalker/Richard Ramirez murders in Los Angeles and San Francisco (April 1984 to August 1985) evoke a similar response.

In the latter two cases, it is clear that law enforcement apprehended the “right man” (although Maury Terry’s The Ultimate Evil makes a semi-compelling case that David Berkowitz was one of several Sons of Sam). The same is not the case regarding Wayne Williams. When it comes to the “Atlanta child murders,” there seems to be much we do not know.

Enter Mike Cobb, a writer of historical fiction that I have publicly compared to Caleb Carr, Ken Follett, and for the first time in this review, Bernard Cornwell. A native of Atlanta, Cobb is the author of two other locally situated historical fiction novels: Dead Beckoning, set in 1895 during the Cotton States and International Exhibition, and the prequel to You Will Know Me by My Deeds, The Devil You Knew.

If you have not read The Devil You Knew, I strongly recommend you do so before continuing with this review—You Will Know Me by My Deeds picks up soon after the closing events of its predecessor.

Both novels center around the fictional Billy Tarwater, who gave us first-person narration in the first installment. He has married a girl he knew as a boy, Cynthia, who survived a brutal abduction and assault when she was a teenager. A handful of other girls her age were not so fortunate. Although the perpetrator is discovered, there are aiders and abettors, as there are in the sequel, and Cynthia’s trauma has manifested itself in several familiar and heartbreaking ways.

Billy works as a beat reporter for an Atlanta newspaper, which gives us insights similar to those in Zodiac (another California serial killer… one never caught, although reporters and investigators have made a solid case for a single perpetrator, who died in 1992). Billy and Cynthia are juggling a lot—two young children, their careers, their aging parents, and most prevalently, the ghosts of the past (and present).

In the midst of Williams’s trial (although he only stood trial for the murder of two adults, the police, the media, and the court of public opinion strongly associated Williams with most of the child murders), Billy and Cynthia’s lives are upended when Cynthia discovers she is being followed.

Calling on an old friend, Gary, from childhood who is now a detective, Billy pursues alternative theories about the Atlanta child murders, while also trying (and sometimes failing) to protect his family from the spectres of the past (and present) that continue to haunt them.

Over the course of these two novels, we get to know Billy, Cynthia, and Gary the way we do the characters in other child-to-adult novels and films, such as It, Mystic River, and Sleepers. It is a powerful device in the capable hands of a craftsman such as Cobb.

Billy’s pursuit of multiple, purposely hidden truths leads him down a path that is all the more disturbing because it might very well be historically accurate. Without spoilers, I can only tell you that religious institutions, the KKK, media, and police are all complicit at different levels in the horrors that unfold in these books. Racists, sexual predators, arms and drug dealers, and other criminals and degenerates extend the cast of characters and push the narrative to dark, disturbing places.

Cobb is also clearly pushing himself as a novelist. More than its predecessors, You Will Know Me by My Deeds has its characters constantly in the weeds, which increases the pace and drama, and ups the classic elements of an action-oriented police procedural that links multiple, geographically divergent locations.

Key to the success of this increased situational complexity are: (1) Cobb’s longtime residency in Atlanta, which makes the city and areas beyond it as vivid and specific as one of his multidimensional characters. (2) Cobb, as always, adds details of the automobiles, businesses, popular brands, and styles of the time, which makes the narrative all the more authentic. I checked a few of the locations he named. In one case, he mentioned the signage, which included a motto. When I looked it up online, I saw something different from what he had written. Then I remembered… he is referencing 1982. Sure enough, there it was, exactly as described, in a photo from that time. Cobb also employs newspaper headlines, commercials, and other seamlessly integrated devices to contextualize the early 1980s.

The Atlanta child murders are still unresolved, although consistently in the news (DNA testing over the decades has been more contradictory than useful in determining Williams’s role in the child and adolescent murders, and prison and other “confessions” from those who claim a KKK involvement are also unreliable). Beyond their worth as historical fiction, I hope these books garner substantial readership and an outcry for the Atlanta police and FBI (famous profiler John Douglas has weighed in now and again, and the case was featured in season 2 of Netflix’s long-form narrative series Mindhunter) to keep digging for the truth, no matter how uncomfortable and inconvenient it is.    

A final note: In an era of book banning, algorithmic censorship, and a focus on targeting hate speech and derogatory language, Cobb has once again added a Word of Caution to the front of the book explaining his rationale for using period- and culture-specific language that, taken out of context, might be misconstrued. As a creative writing teacher, developmental editor, and story analyst, I tell my students and clients this: if language choices are authentic to the characters and the story, then they absolutely should—as does Cobb—employ them.

I truly do look forward to what comes next from the mind and pen of this impressive author.