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
Middling for this standout series but guaranteed to please anyone who thinks the cops sometimes get it wrong.
A cold case pulls Harry Bosch back from retirement and into another eventful partnership with Detective Renée Ballard of the LAPD.
The widow of Bosch’s retired mentor, Detective John Jack Thompson, has a present for Bosch, and it’s a doozy: the murder book for the unsolved killing of ex-con John Hilton, shot to death in his car one night nearly 20 years ago, which Thompson swiped from the archives without authorization or explanation. Bosch, who wonders why Thompson lifted the murder book if he didn’t intend to work the case, is eager to take a crack at it himself, but he needs the resources that only an active partner can provide. But Ballard, settled into the routine of the midnight shift after her exile from Robbery-Homicide (Dark Sacred Night, 2018), has just started working her own case, the arson that killed Eddie, a homeless man, inside his tent. As if that’s not enough criminal activity, Bosch’s half brother, Lincoln lawyer Mickey Haller, faces the apparently hopeless defense of Jeffrey Herstadt, who not only left his DNA under the fingernail of Walter Montgomery, the Superior Court judge he’s accused of killing, but also obligingly confessed to the murder. Working sometimes in tandem, more often separately, and sometimes actively against the cops who naturally bridle at the suggestion that any of their own theories or arrests might be flawed, Ballard and Bosch slog through the usual dead ends and fruitless rounds of questioning to link two murders separated by many years to a single hired killer. The most mysterious question of all—why did John Jack Thompson steal that murder book in the first place?—is answered suddenly, casually, and surprisingly.
Middling for this standout series but guaranteed to please anyone who thinks the cops sometimes get it wrong.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-48561-6
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
An amusingly complex con combines with little-known historical details to provide an enchanting read.
A determined woman seeks justice.
Elizabeth Miles had a disreputable past as a grifter, but a chance friendship with Mrs. Bates, a suffragette, introduced her into New York society, and now she’s engaged to her friend's son, Gideon Bates, a straight-arrow lawyer. While Gideon is waiting to be called up to serve in the Great War, Cpl. Thomas Preston asks him to draft a new will leaving Thomas’ money and his one-third share in Preston Shoe Manufacturing to his pregnant new wife, Rose O’Dell, instead of his older brother, Fred, who currently shares ownership of the company with Thomas and Delia, their young, widowed stepmother. Since Rose is not the sort the Preston family would approve of, Gideon writes the will in secret, naming himself executor, and Thomas leaves it with Rose. All too soon thereafter, an angry Fred Preston barges into Gideon’s office saying that his brother is dead and his brother's widow claims to be the heir. Refusing to reveal his client’s business, Gideon visits Rose’s apartment, where he runs into the bruiser who attempted to strangle her and stole the only signed copy of the will. It’s clear that neither Fred nor his stepmother will help Rose, whom Elizabeth moves to her aunt’s house, where she and several other progressive women live, knowing that she’ll be safe. When neither threats of court cases nor attempts to shame Fred work, Elizabeth turns to her brother and father, the Old Man, and their talented group of con men (City of Secrets, 2018, etc.) to find a way to raise money for Rose and the coming child. Disapproving of war profiteers and men who hurt women, the group comes up with a clever plan that will make Rose rich and pay them something for their efforts. They stumble into the American Protective League, a nest of German spies, and a still more dangerous enemy in the Spanish flu, which will kill vast numbers all over the globe.
An amusingly complex con combines with little-known historical details to provide an enchanting read.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0565-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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