No one currently working the field demonstrates more convincingly and joyously the deep affinity between pulp fiction and...
Seven laid-back adventures, one of them brand new, for “freelance troubleshooter” and good old boy Hap Collins and his gay black Republican partner Leonard Pine.
As Michael Koryta notes in his celebratory introduction, salt-and-pepper heroes have been done to death, but Lansdale (Paradise Sky, 2015, etc.) keeps his duo fresh through their dialogue, which manages to sound both relaxed and inventive. The pair talk themselves through three long stories and four short ones. All the long ones are keepers. After Leonard wins a bar fight in “Hyenas,” one of the guys he’s beaten up hires him and Hap to extricate his brother from a gang that specializes in knocking over armored cars. In “Bent Twig,” Hap, initially without Leonard, goes looking for his lover Brett’s semi-kidnapped prostitute daughter, Tillie, who’s “tough as yesterday’s fajita meat.” An estranged wife hires the pair to beat up her fearsome soon-to-be-ex in “Dead Aim”; when someone takes even stronger measures against him, the boys are left holding the bag. The plotting throughout is no more than routine, but the uncovering of layer after layer of double crosses allows Hap and Leonard numerous opportunities to discourse about everything and nothing as Lansdale spins out his trademark redneck similes, the most pungent since Raymond Chandler. Three of the shorter stories go by in a flash: a remembrance of a 1978 “Death by Chili”; a bullied kid’s chilling final act in “The Boy Who Became Invisible”; and Hap’s earliest recollections of Leonard, another kid he’s just befriended, in “Not Our Kind,” the only new story here. Attorney Veil’s defense of Hap on charges of arson in “Veil’s Visit,” co-authored with Andrew Vachss, proves mainly that your best friends aren’t necessarily your best collaborators. The collection is rounded out with Lansdale’s reminiscences about chronicling the pair’s adventures, the author’s faux-interview of his heroes, and four black-and-white photos from the SundanceTV series.
No one currently working the field demonstrates more convincingly and joyously the deep affinity between pulp fiction and the American tall tale.Pub Date: March 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61696-191-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Tachyon
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
A good detective in an incendiary procedural.
A Yorkshire detective untangles an old murder and new arsons.
DS Adam Tyler, a cold-case investigator for the South Yorkshire Police, is a bit of a loner, but his boss wants him to network more so he lets Sally-Ann, one of his civilian colleagues, talk him into joining a pub evening with the South Yorkshire Police LGBT Support Network. He doesn't plan to stay long, and when he meets a handsome man at the bar—"Sweetheart, he was everyone's type. Even mine," Sally-Ann says—he abandons the group to go home with him. The next morning, when he gets to work, Sally-Ann tells him there's big news: The body of Gerald Cartwright, a local tycoon and shady character who disappeared years ago, has been found in the basement of his own house during a renovation ordered by his 21-year-old son, who'd just inherited it. Tyler manages to get himself assigned to the investigation though the detective who's been working on it since Cartwright's disappearance doesn't want to hand it over to cold cases; he soon discovers the identity of his one-night stand: Oscar Cartwright, son of the deceased and potential suspect, which further complicates his position. Meanwhile, Edna and Lily, elderly Cartwright retainers of various duties, have begun receiving unsettling anonymous letters, and the whole community is rattled by a series of arsons that seem more and more likely to be related to the discovery of Cartwright's body. As Tyler's investigation slowly uncovers a sordid history of manipulation and abuse, the violence increases and he is assaulted several times. The repetitive nature of these assaults is a weakness in the book, but the richness of Tyler's character and the vividness of his negotiation of his own sexuality and the casual bigotry in his community are effective. The subsidiary characters are lively and believable, the arsons are particularly well described, and though the plot sometimes seems gratuitously complex, this is a rewarding entertainment.
A good detective in an incendiary procedural.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-54202-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins will find this comfortingly familiar despite (or maybe because of?) the shocks and...
In Pinborough’s (Behind Her Eyes, 2018, etc.) twisty, decade-spanning, multivoiced thriller, everyone has secrets: teenager Ava; her mom, Lisa; and Lisa’s best friend, Marilyn.
On the surface, all three women fulfill the roles expected of them, and they support and love one another, but they don’t truly know each other. Ava, a competitive swimmer, is finishing up her exams and sneaking around with her first boyfriend while overly protective mom Lisa is about to clinch a big contract at work—and maybe even go on a date with a handsome millionaire client. Marilyn has been dealing with headaches at home, but she’s still game for a shopping trip to outfit Lisa for that big date. Soon, however, they will discover that someone else in their lives has a secret much darker than any they carry. This person is a murderer who is stalking a childhood friend who, they believe, betrayed their deepest trust. There are a lot of plot twists and reveals within the novel, some of which are surprising, some of which are expected. Pinborough weaves several different time periods and several different narrative voices to create layers of character and conflict, but the characters are types often found in psychological thrillers, and while their problems are often relatable, at least at first, they aren’t particularly engaging. It’s clear which decisions, and which silences, are going to get them into trouble, and yet, as people do, they carry on anyway. The one element that sets Pinborough’s novel apart from the slew of similar thrillers is the emphasis on female empowerment and the power of female relationships. These women need no one to save them, no knights in shining armor or handsome cops. As Marilyn succinctly puts it, “Fuck. That. Shit.”
Fans of Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins will find this comfortingly familiar despite (or maybe because of?) the shocks and turns along the way.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-285679-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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