Sun 23 Aug 2020
A Mystery Review by Barry Gardner: JOE R. LANSDALE – Mucho Mojo.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
JOE R. LANSDALE – Mucho Mojo. Hap Collins & Leonard Pine #2. Limited edition: Cemetery Dance, hardcover, 1994. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1994; paperback, 1995. Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, trade paperback, January 2009. Listed as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was awarded the British Fantasy Award. TV Adaptation: The book was the basis of the second season of Hap and Leonard (Sundance, 2017).
Lansdale is well-known (at least to Bill Crider and me), but primarily for horror, in which field he’s a multiple award winner. This is his first “traditional†crime novel to my knowledge. (*) Mysterious thinks it’s a breakout.
Hap Collins is white, fortyish, and working in the rose fields of East Texas. Leonard Pine is black, the same, and gay (but not very cheerful) on top of it. They’re tighter than ticks on the proverbial redbone, and Leonard has a bad leg gotten saving Hap’s life during some shady doings. They are sort of drifting along when Leonard’s Uncle Chester dies and leaves him a hundred grand and his house, which changes a lot of things. They discover that Uncle Chester was going senile before he died, and had hinted to the local police that somebody was murdering black children.
Then, while putting his house in shape, they discover a bunch of kiddie porn magazines and dig up the bones of a 10-year old child buried in a box under the floor. The police think Uncle Chester did it, but Leonard doesn’t believe it, so he and Hap begin to dig deeper. So to speak.
This is an entertaining book, and Hap and Leonard are interesting and refreshingly different characters. I don’t know that they’ re all that believable: 40-year old field hands with as much on the ball as our dynamic duo strike me as more than a little unlikely, but hey, it’s just a story, right? And a good one, too. Lansdale knows how to spin a yarn. He’s got a good East Texas “voice,” and Hap narrates the story effectively, with a fair share of quips and country sayin’s.
There’s a lot of dialogue, and not much of the brooding atmosphere you might expect from Lansdale. It won’t be everybody’s cup of tea, but you won’t know if it’s yours ’til you try a sip.
(*) EDITOR’S NOTE: There was one earlier book in the series: Savage Season, a small press edition published in hardcover by Ziesing in 1990,.
August 23rd, 2020 at 3:52 pm
There was also a mass-market pb edition of SAVAGE SEASON in 1990, from Bantam.
August 23rd, 2020 at 5:35 pm
Ah, yes. I remember seeing it Borders when it first came out, and putting it back again after browsing through it. It was in the mystery section, but I recognized Lansdale’s name from his horror fiction, but I never was a big fan of horror fiction.
August 23rd, 2020 at 7:32 pm
To Barry’s point about Hap and Leonard, they are not that strange if you grew up in or around East Texas. I admit Hap may be a bit more woke than average, but they fit a fairly common good old boy pattern familiar to anyone from that part of the world, even the interracial friendship, but of course like most series characters exaggerated.
I would argue Philip Marlowe isn’t a portrait of any private detective I ever met, including myself, and James Bond an ammalgram of wartime heroics in a peacetime setting. Maigret isn’t like any French policeman I knew nor Appleby anyone from the Yard I met. Series characters are usually archetypes one way or another.
It’s a bit unfair to compare characters like that to reality without noting Hap and Leonard do represent reality in that guys drifting along that way are not unknown in this part of the world, they just don’t outwit criminals and cops and take down rich powerful crooks with quite the frequency Hap and Leonard do.
The series has continued with great success, the adaptations are pitch perfect and actually feel like the East Texas I know albeit from a noirish slightly skewered perspective unique to Lansdale.
Anyone who hasn’t tried one should take a dip. The writing is excellent, and the boys fine company, about the only nod to Lansdale’s horror works is a slight tendency to Magic Realism, which by the way is also true of James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux books a few miles East of the boys stomping ground and part and parcel of that part of the world, East Texas and Louisiana Gothic being a real thing.
August 23rd, 2020 at 8:47 pm
Excellent observations, David, as always.
It does remind me that I watched the first episode of HAP & LEONARD streaming on Netflix, I think, and never got back to it. I don’t know why, as I found it very enjoyable. I now know what I’ll be doing tonight.
August 24th, 2020 at 12:20 pm
Lansdale has emerged over the years as a major force with Hap & Leonard certainly his “bread & butter” characters. I can also heartily recommend a handful of Joe R.’s stand alones: SUNSET & SAWDUST, LOST ECHOES and THE BIG BLOW.
August 24th, 2020 at 12:32 pm
Right you are, Stephen. Of those I’ve read, I think that SUNSET & SAWDUST is perhaps his best.