I received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley.
Best buddies Hap and Leonard have some time to kill so they end up sparring, eating ice cream, aI received a free advance copy of this from NetGalley.
Best buddies Hap and Leonard have some time to kill so they end up sparring, eating ice cream, and generally farting around as they bullshit extensively about their past.
If this sounds more like a trip down memory lane or a clip show episode of a TV series than the fellas having a new crime adventure then you’d be right because the idea of H&L wandering around to some of their old haunts is just the framework used to string together some short stories about the good ole days which weren’t always so good. Along the way we hear about their first meeting as well as the early days of their friendship, and there’s a lot about Hap’s childhood and teen years with stories that involve his parents as well as good deal about racial issues.
Overall, there’s some interesting stuff for H&L fans, and I’d only seen a couple of the stories before. However, by sticking to their early days we don’t get much of the what I love which are the guys bumbling their way through some kind of mess as they try to play detective and usually get themselves in a whole lot of trouble. There’s still some crime elements to it, but I gotta say that Hap ran across so many dead bodies in his younger days that he probably missed his true calling of being an undertaker.
They’re all pretty decent, but it fell into a weird grey area for me where I felt like I was getting more history than I really needed or wanted about the guys rather than another one of their hilarious adventures....more
I received a free copy from the publisher for review.
This is a good time to be a fan of Hap & Leonard with the new novel Honky Tonk Samurai being releI received a free copy from the publisher for review.
This is a good time to be a fan of Hap & Leonard with the new novel Honky Tonk Samurai being released and a TV series based on their adventures about to premiere. As a fan who has been reading H&L since the late ‘90s I have to admit to feeling a bit conflicted about all this attention. I’m glad to see Joe R. Lansdale and his creations getting their due, but I’ve also got that same kind of scornful streak that makes hipsters such a delight when they sneer at any band that more than a dozen people have heard of.
“Oh, really? You started reading Hap & Leonard? Just downloaded all their books on your e-reader this morning, did you? How nice. Of course, they were better LAST CENTURY which is when I discovered their early books in a soggy cardboard box in the basement of a used book store….”
If you don’t know about Hap & Leonard already then suffice it to say that they’re a couple of best friends living in east Texas who have an uncanny ability to put themselves in bad situations that usually require a whole lot of ass whippings and some gunfire to get out of. They’re profane and politically incorrect but don’t think that they’re your standard good old boys. Hap is a former hippie whose bleeding heart is frequently the cause of their problems while Leonard is a Vietnam veteran who is proud to be black and gay, and his favorite hobby is burning down crack houses. In the hands of Lansdale the adventures of H&L are often hilarious and frequently gross, and yet there’s a surprising amount of depth at times about the real cost of violence as well as a profound sense of melancholy that the narrator Hap has as he reflects on his life and other matters.
Even as I look down my nose at you late comers I have to admit that this collection put together to capitalize on the TV show has a lot of stuff that I haven’t read. There’s two novellas, four short stories, an ‘interview’ with the author questioning the guys, and Lansdale also wrote a brief summary of his history writing the series as an extended afterwards. Michael Koryta also provides a nice introduction.
While I’d previously read the novella Hyenas and the short story that came with it, The Boy Who Became Invisible, all the rest of this was new to me so even as a long time H&L fan I found plenty of value here. (I’d never read the other novella, Dead Aim, because I refused to pay the outrageous hardback price for it at the time although it’s since become available at a much more reasonable cost as an e-book.) I was particularly delighted to finally read the short story Veil’s Visit which is a collaboration with Andrew Vachss who is also the inspiration for the character of Veil, a lawyer who you don’t want to meet in or out of court.
If you’re someone who hasn’t read Hap & Leonard, and you’re curious then this could make for a good starting point because it is a nice variety pack that gives you a taste of what they’re all about. For those who have read some of the series then it’s a question of how much is new material to you. If you’ve read the novellas already then it may seem a bit thin, but it’d be a good buy for H&L fans who haven’t.
Update 2/23/16: It was just brought to my attention that there's an e-version of this called Hap and Leonard Ride Again which apparently has the same material with a few additional short stories....more
You’ve never heard the expression ‘hotdog crap fries’ before? That’s because it’s my new favorite exclamatHotdog crap fries! Hap and Leonard are back!
You’ve never heard the expression ‘hotdog crap fries’ before? That’s because it’s my new favorite exclamation after misreading this line in the book: "Some summers it’s so hot dog crap fries on the sidewalk." For a minute there I thought Sonic was really scraping the bottom of the barrel for new menu ideas…
But aside from that little misunderstanding it was great to get a new adventure with a couple of my favorite rednecks just in time for the premiere of their new TV show. The guys are trying to do a little quiet surveillance work for their private detective gig when they witness a dog being beaten by an abusive owner. After a much deserved ass kicking is delivered Hap has a new dog, but as usual their best intentions have unintended consequences when this leads to them getting a new client, an elderly woman who wants to hire them to look for a granddaughter who stole her money and went missing years before.
The trail leads to a car dealership that is offering a lot more than easy financing, and as usual Hap & Leonard soon find themselves at odds with various dangerous people including a biker gang. They’re also warned that the people they’re dealing with may use the services of a mysterious hitman who likes to remove the testicles of his victims.
While I always enjoy reading this series I’d found the last several books less than fully satisfactory. A large part of this was because Vanilla Ride and Devil Red were on the thin side, and the next two after that were just novellas that clocked in about a 100 pages each. This time out Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe Lansdale provides a full 340 pages of Hap & Leonard doing their thing, and it felt like finally getting a full meal after having to nibble on appetizers when you’re really hungry.
There’s all the usual factors that make for a great Hap & Leonard story with lots of humor, profanity filled crude dialogue, crazy characters, a mystery for the guys to bumble through, and plenty of threats to their well being. There's also a whole lot of violence in the form of beatings, gunfire, and the judicious use of a crowbar at one point.
Getting a full sized novel instead of a quickie also means there’s time for subplots, and we’re treated to Hap’s girlfriend Brett taking over the detective agency they work for, Leonard’s problems with his on-again-off-again boyfriend, and the appearance of a new character that promises a whole mess of new complications for Hap. There’s also the reappearance of some old friends that add a lot of spice and action to the whole adventure. (view spoiler)[Landsale also has a pretty surprising ending to this one that is sure to have Hap and Leonard fans buzzing for a while. (hide spoiler)]
Overall, this ended up being a return to form for the series, and I’d say it's the best book featuring Hap and Leonard since Bad Chili. Now I can settle back with a big order of hotdog crap fries and watch the TV show....more
Hap and Leonard are up to their usual hijinks when they get hired by a man who thThat was short and sweet.
Actually, it was very, very short and sweet.
Hap and Leonard are up to their usual hijinks when they get hired by a man who thinks his younger brother has gotten mixed up with a crew of armed robbers. The guys come up with a plan to show the young man the error of his ways, but as always they get a lot more than they bargained for.
This has all the stuff I could ask for in a Hap & Leonard novel. It’s funny, profane, action packed and generally great. Lansdale once again walks a fine line in making the violence brutal and scary but still finds the dark humor in it, too. The opening of this book finds Hap picking Leonard up from the cops after his enthusiastic self-defense during a night club brawl left a hilarious amount of damage behind, and as usual I found myself laughing out loud several times.
My complaint with this is that it’s a novella, not a novel, and it clocks in at 100 pages including a short story about an incident during Hap’s high school years. None of the books in the series have been particularly long, but the last one, Devil Red, was only about 200 pages and felt way too short for the hardback price I paid for it. So when I saw that this was a 100 page hardback for $25, I decided it could wait until I got it from the library someday. Now I see that the next one will also be another very short hardback at premium prices.
I love Lansdale’s writing, but I’m too cheap to pay these prices for books I can read in a couple of hours. I’m not sure why he’s releasing them like this, and if his only story ideas are coming to him as these shorter tales, why not collect three of them in one hardback? As someone who has purchased a pretty good stack of Lansdale’s books over the years, I can’t help but feel that the loyalty of the Hap & Leonard fans is being taken advantage of. ...more
Take a middle-aged redneck in East Texas with a mouthy gay black best friend, give them both an unerring instinct for irritating the living hell out oTake a middle-aged redneck in East Texas with a mouthy gay black best friend, give them both an unerring instinct for irritating the living hell out of dangerous people and putting themselves in shitty situations, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. And a highly entertaining crime series.
Hap and Leonard have started working part time for their friend Hanson’s detective agency, but Hap is brooding even more than usual about the violence that they always seem to attract. Hanson gets a new case with a rich woman wanting them to look into her son’s murder. The son had a crazy girlfriend that was killed with him, and she was mixed up with a cult of weirdos pretending to be vampires and was also the recipient of a large inheritance. When the guys starting looking into it, they accidentally pick up on a pattern that indicates they’ve found the trail of a vicious hired killer they name Devil Red.
It’s good to have Lansdale doing Hap and Leonard novels again. They guys are still their entertaining selves, and Lansdale has given them another brutal case to get through. As always, the dialogue is politically incorrect, profane, and completely hilarious. There’s a running joke in this one about Leonard wearing a Sherlock Holmes style deerstalker hat that made me laugh repeatedly.
However, this was only 205 pages and seemed even shorter than that. The story didn’t just seem quick, it seemed chopped off. Lansdale books generally don't have any fat on them, and he’s delivered a lot of entertaining short novels, but frankly, I felt a bit ripped off for buying this one in hardback. It’s still a lot of fun, but I would have liked another 50 pages or so of making fun of Leonard’s hat.
I’d also recommend that anyone interested in this one read the previous book Vanilla Ride first because some of the events and characters from that one come back up here. ...more
Hap and Leonard are back! As usual, no good deed goes unpunished when the guys try to help an old friend by getting his graddaughter loose from her drHap and Leonard are back! As usual, no good deed goes unpunished when the guys try to help an old friend by getting his graddaughter loose from her drug dealing boyfriend.
This one starts with the best fight scene in a trailer since Uma Thurman and Daryl Hannah went at it in Kill Bill 2. After that Hap and Leonard find themselve in yet another bad situation where they'll now have to deal with the Dixie Mafia, the FBI, and a huge thug nicknamed the Big Guy. Oh, then there's the professional killer called Vanilla Ride that's more dangerous than all the rest put together.
It seemed like Lansdale had left Hap and Leonard behind with the depressing Captain's Outrageous, and then his movement towards books like The Bottoms and A Fine Dark Line, which were great but didn't have the same style I love in the H&L series. But the break seems to have inspired new highs in redneck obscenity, horrific violence and completely inappropriate humor. And I couldn't be happier about it. I'm hoping we don't have to wait another 8 or 9 years for the next one....more
Hap and Leonard go south of the border, and there hasn’t been a trip to Mexico end this badly since The Wild Bunch. As Warren Zevon once sang, they'llHap and Leonard go south of the border, and there hasn’t been a trip to Mexico end this badly since The Wild Bunch. As Warren Zevon once sang, they'll need lawyers, guns, and money to get out of this fix.
The guys have new careers as security guards at the local chicken processing plant. As Hap is leaving work one night he breaks up an attack on a young woman by a drug crazed maniac. (The fight scene is Lansdale at his best. I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream as I read it.) Usually good deeds don't go unpunished, but this time Hap is actually rewarded for his heroics with some cash and time off work so he decides to treat Leonard to a sea cruise.
Unfortunately, with their usual knack for trouble, things go badly at one of the cruise stops in Mexico, and they end up as the victims of a machete wielding gang of muggers. And since Hap & Leonard can always make a bad situation worse, they find a way to get thrown in a Mexican jail. They get out with a little help from their friends, and for once, they try to do the smart thing and return to the U.S. without getting further involved. But trouble follows them home and costs them dearly.
This was the last Hap and Leonard novel that Lansdale wrote for 8 years until the publication of Vanilla Ride, and it feels like he may have been a bit burnt out on the series. While there’s always been a bit of a melancholy tone to the H&L books, this one has several elements that are more depressing that the other ones. The humor is still there, but the guys seem worn out and sick of getting pulled into their violent adventures. Lansdale would write a lot of very good books during the break he took from Hap and Leonard, and the two would return refreshed and lively again in the next one so that makes me feel better about Captains Outrageous because I thought for years that it may have been the end of the series.
On a trivia note: Crime fiction fans might recognize the character of the lawyer Veil as Lansdale’s tribute to his friend and fellow crime writer Andrew Vachss. It’s a fun little cameo. You gotta love a lawyer with an eye patch. ...more
Hap Collins and his friend Leonard Pine seem like pure east Texas rednecks in a lot of ways. They have crappy jobs working in rose fields, shoot clay Hap Collins and his friend Leonard Pine seem like pure east Texas rednecks in a lot of ways. They have crappy jobs working in rose fields, shoot clay pigeons with their shotguns, drive worn out piece-of-shit vehicles, raise hunting dogs and listen to country music. But Leonard is black and gay, and Hap is a former damn dirty hippie who got sent to prison for refusing his induction notice during Vietnam as a protest against the war. So they aren’t exactly the Dukes of Hazard.
Years after his prison stay ended his marriage, Hap’s ex-wife Trudy still likes to come around regularly to break his heart all over again. Trudy is another former flower child who still thinks she can change the world while Hap’s time in prison took care of all his idealistic notions. When Trudy shows up again, she’s got a new proposal for Hap.
Trudy and some other old damn dirty hippies have gotten a lead on a lot of cash from a bank robbery that was believed lost. They think it’s in a sunken boat in an remote river area that Hap grew up in. Trudy wants Hap’s help, and Hap insists on cutting Leonard in, too. But both have second thoughts when they meet the old radicals they’ll be working with. Still convinced that they can revive the spirit of the ‘60s, they want the money for their pet causes while Hap and Leonard just want to be able to stop working in the rose fields.
Joe Lansdale is one of the funniest guys I’ve ever read, and he really knows about rural living and the redneck lifestyle. Every time I read one of his books, I feel like I’m sitting on a front porch in my old hometown while listening to some entertaining story teller spin a yarn about the trouble that some idiot good old boys got themselves into. The series is profane, politically incorrect, violent, and hilarious. Lansdale created a couple of my all-time favorite characters in Hap and Leonard. ...more
When Hap goes to spend Christmas Eve with his friend Leonard, he finds that Leonard’s idea of a Yule log is burning down the neighborhood crack house.When Hap goes to spend Christmas Eve with his friend Leonard, he finds that Leonard’s idea of a Yule log is burning down the neighborhood crack house. Since this is the third time Leonard has torched it, the cops are a little miffed even though he always pulls the drug dealers out of the fire. Police lieutenant Hanson offers to help get Leonard off the hook for his pyromania if the guys will look for his girlfriend, Florida, who has gone missing while poking around the story of the relative of a legendary bluesman who allegedly committed suicide while in jail.
There’s a couple of problems with this request. Florida disappeared in Grovetown, a racist hotbed of Klan-like activity that probably didn’t like a black female lawyer looking into what seems to be a classic civil rights violation. Grovetown surely won’t appreciate a guy like Leonard, who is black and gay and more than willing to fight anyone who has a problem with it. Plus, Florida dated Hap before breaking his heart to take up with Hanson so he isn’t thrilled about potentially getting killed while looking for her.
But Hap and Leonard never saw a bucket of crap they wouldn’t willingly step into so they’re off to Grovetown, which turns out to be the biggest cracker hellhole imaginable. Hap and Leonard are tough, but can they take on an entire town?
Another great entry in the Hap & Leonard series, Lansdale started to really explore the guys’ complex relationship to violence. Hap and Leonard aren’t scared of a fight and can usually hold their own, but their adventures are starting to take a serious toll on their bodies and their psyches. Lansdale has a knack for making violence and its aftermath seem genuine and horrifying while not getting bogged down in faux angst about it. ...more
This book features the pistol whipping of a little person, the rescue of an armadillo from a gun dealer, a fight in a whore house, the amputation of aThis book features the pistol whipping of a little person, the rescue of an armadillo from a gun dealer, a fight in a whore house, the amputation of a foot via shotgun, redneck pimps, arguments caused by dirty underwear, prairie dogs being sucked out of their holes by a glorified vacuum cleaner and a really good steak ranchero.
Yep. It’s another Joe Lansdale novel.
Hap’s girlfriend Brett is contacted by a couple of murderous pimps from Oklahoma who claim that her daughter, a prostitute, is in trouble. Hap volunteers to help Brett find her, and Leonard reluctantly comes along to watch their backs. Hap hopes to locate and grab Brett’s daughter before any big trouble can get started, but as usual, when Hap and Leonard try to do a good deed things get bloody in a hurry.
This is one of the more violent entries in the series, and it kicked off a depressing tone that would last through the next book. Lansdale always showed the cost of violence on Hap and Leonard, but this is one adventure that takes a serious toll on the guys. ...more
Hap returns home from working a gig on an oil rig and is promptly attacked by a rabid squirrel. Thanks to crappy insurance and a grumpy doctor he has Hap returns home from working a gig on an oil rig and is promptly attacked by a rabid squirrel. Thanks to crappy insurance and a grumpy doctor he has to stay in the hospital in order to get his rabies shots paid for. While Hap is left to the mercy of the American health care system his best friend Leonard has been having problems with his boyfriend, Raul. Raul has been two-timing him with a biker, and it’s made Leonard so angry that he’s doing crazy things like beating the biker with a broom handle and shooting up bars and motorcycles. When the biker turns up dead and Raul is missing, Leonard is naturally the prime suspect.
But it isn‘t all bad news. Hap has met a hot foul-mouthed red-headed nurse named Brett, and they’ve taken a shine to each other. Once upon a time, Brett dealt with an abusive ex-husband by hitting him in the head with a shovel and setting his hair on fire. Hap may have found true love.
This was the first book by Lansdale I ever read and with the opening chapter that details the squirrel attack on Hap, I laughed so hard that I thought I did myself permanent injury. I knew then that I was going to a Joe Lansdale fan for life, and he hasn’t let me down since. This is probably still my favorite Hap & Leonard novel. Like the others books, it’s obscene, violent, politically incorrect and one of the funniest things you’ll ever read....more
My favorite rednecks, Hap & Leonard, can’t do anything without it turning into bloody mayhem. Leonard’s Uncle Chester helped raise him, but then coldlMy favorite rednecks, Hap & Leonard, can’t do anything without it turning into bloody mayhem. Leonard’s Uncle Chester helped raise him, but then coldly disowned him when Leonard told him he was gay. However, after Chester dies, he leaves Leonard his house and a decent sum of money.
Leonard never really got over the way Chester reacted to his coming out, and when the house turns out to be in terrible shape, he wants to live in it to relive a bit of his childhood while he fixes it up to get it ready to sell. Since it’s a bad part of town with a crack house next door, he asks Hap to help out and keep him company. When they make a horrible discovery underneath the floorboards, the guys get sucked into a murder mystery that the cops are ready to pin on Chester posthumously. Leonard doesn’t buy it and is determined to clear his uncle’s name. But they’ll have to do it while feuding with the neighborhood crack dealers.
I’ve seen many Lansdale fans declare this the best of the Hap and Leonard books, and it’s tough to argue with that. (Bad Chili is probably my favorite.) There’s the hilarious politically incorrect dialogue mixed with horrific violence and terrible tragedy. One thing that stands out for me on this one is the nice role reversal Lansdale did here. Since most of the story takes place in a black part of town, Hap is the minority and he often feels out of place, especially while navigating a romance with a black woman who is a little ashamed of dating a white guy.
I always enjoy Hap and Leonard’s sociological debates, too. The bleeding heart, ex-hippie Hap can’t help but make excuses for people, no matter what they’ve done. The black and gay Leonard is always hilarious in his hard-hearted arguments that everyone is responsible for what they become no matter what happens in their past, and he has zero sympathy for anyone that doesn’t meet his standards. ...more
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