Jackrabbit Smile

January 29, 2018
Hap Collins and his longtime love, Brett Sawyer, have finally decided to tie the knot in Edgar-winner Lansdale’s raucous 13th Hap and Leonard novel (after 2017’s Rusty Puppy), but they’ve barely gotten the burgers and hot dogs on the grill for their East Texas–style wedding party when two uninvited guests arrive. The heavily tattooed man, Thomas Mulhaney, wears a white pride T-shirt, and his mother, Judith, looks to be out of backwoods Pentecostal central casting. Hap’s best friend, Leonard Pine, a black Republican and Vietnam vet, prepares to escort them off the property in his usual inimitable way. But then the pair ask if they can hire the detectives to look into the disappearance of Thomas’s sister, Jackie. Hap and Leonard hold their noses and agree to investigate. The trail leads them to the nearby town where Jackie, an accounting whiz with strange views on interdimensional travel, was last seen. There they meet a hog farmer known as Professor, who has plans of creating a segregated white utopia aided by assorted local yokels and a pair of lethal twin brothers. As always, Lansdale provides a wild, fun ride with an astute eye on social issues. Agent: Danny Baror, Baror International.

March 1, 2018
A search for a missing girl is the spark that sets off the fireworks in the latest noir adventures of the Texas investigators Hap and Leonard.The comic volatility of Hap and Leonard's partnership is that they are, respectively, white-black, straight-gay, liberal-conservative. This new installation begins with Hap and his longtime girlfriend, Brett, who also happens to own the detective agency he and Leonard work for, getting hitched and throwing a backyard barbecue by way of celebration. The party is interrupted by unwelcome visitors, a skinny young white supremacist and his ailing mother. It seems their respective sister and daughter has gone missing, and they want Hap to find her. After becoming disconcerted to learn that Leonard is not the boy who cleans up but will be an equal partner in the search, they nonetheless agree to hire the pair for the job. The search takes Hap and Leonard to Hap's small Texas hometown, which, he is disturbed to learn, is being slowly bought up by a slick white supremacist leader who sends his thugs, some of them Hap's old high school acquaintances, to keep tabs on the pair's every move. By now the Hap and Leonard series has settled into an odd mixture of brutality and sentimentality. You can be sure, for instance, that a pit bull used for fighting purposes will be spirited away in the middle of the night to a more loving home, where his happy inner-canine slob can flourish. You can also be sure that, particularly if Leonard has anything to do with it, revenge will be meted out without a trace of pity or regret. This entry feels a mite quick, even its volatility managed and thus kind of a safer bet than the earlier entries. But it remains a companionable, enjoyable, and profane series.Familiarity has worn down the edge in this series, but its pleasures are still welcome.

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Starred review from March 1, 2018
Hap and Leonard, Lansdale's unlikely East Texas best friends (Hap is a quasi-hippie redneck and Leonard a black, gay, short-fused Vietnam vet) are back for their eleventh full-length novel (after Rusty Puppy, 2017). Hap is celebrating his marriage to longtime girlfriend Brett when a couple of racists show up. Fortunately, they aren't there to break up the joyful, diverse gathering?they want to hire someone to find a missing woman. Hap and Leonard take the case, empathy overruling personal dislike, and their investigation leads them to a small town run by a man who considers himself a segregationist. Not a racist. Bigotry may be part of the plot, and the smiling white supremacist may be a metaphor for a recently emboldened brand of intolerance, but part of what makes this book exceptional is the way Lansdale portrays the long legacy of race and class discrimination as the characters' lived experience. Reporting from the front lines, Hap and Leonard confront the convoluted logic of racism directly while remaining able to view the haters as human?even if Leonard is willing to pass final, violent judgment in a way Hap is not. Lansdale is one of a kind, with a deceptively folksy and funny voice that hides real darkness; fans of the eponymous SundanceTVseries will be delighted to find the books are even better.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)