With his trademark knack for gut-busting laughter and head-splitting action, Joe R. Lansdale serves up a bubbling cauldron of murder and mayhem that only he could create.
Hap Collins has just returned home from a gig working on an off shore oil rig. With a new perspective on life, Hap wants to change the way he's living, and shoot the straight and narrow. That is until the man who stole Leonard Pine's boyfriend turns up headless in a ditch and Leonard gets fingered for the murder. Hap vows to clear Leonard's name, but things only get more complicated when Leonard's ex shows up dead. To the police it is just a matter of gay-biker infighting, but to Hap and Leonard murder is always serious business, and these hit a little to close to home.
Amazon.com Review
"Don't you get a little tired working so hard to be folksy?" Hap Collins asks a colorful, clod-kicking private eye named Jim Bob Luke. "Naw," Jim Bob tells him. "I figure it's kind of an edge. People don't know what you're really thinking. They think you're just a shallow good ole boy." Nobody would ever think that about Collins, who looks like a long-haired '70s dropout and is seriously worried about the quality of his life. With his best buddy Leonard Pine--who aside from being black and gay is extremely tough and nasty in a firefight--Hap goes after the biker who first stole and then killed Pine's boyfriend. Jim Bob also gets involved in the chase, which converges on a corrupt local chili entrepreneur and a totally convincing Texas tornado. Two other Hap Collins books, Mucho Mojo and The Two-Bear Mambo , are available in paperback.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. After Leonard's boyfriend and the biker he has run off with are gruesomely murdered, Leonard turns to his (straight) buddy Hap for help clearing his name. So begins this fast and funny East Texas shoot-'em-up tall tale that brims with very adult (strong language, raunchy sex, sadomasochistic violence and pornography) and absurd (bizarre squirrel attack) themes. As Leonard and Hap soon realize that they are more prey than investigators, the plot grows increasingly complex and hilarious, heightened by Phil Gigante's pacing and performance that spans a masterful range from Hap's twangy narration to Leonard's basso and night nurse Brett's sassy purr. A Vintage paperback. (June)
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