About two years ago, Joe R. Lansdale’s raucous and rowdy Hap and Leonard series was reactivated through a combination of reissues of earlier titles and, most notably, with a new addition to the saga, VANILLA RIDE. Now, Lansdale continues the dangerous, down-home escapades of the East Texas jack-of-all trades Hap Collins and his black, gay best bud and former military man, Leonard Pine, with DEVIL RED.
Everything good we’ve come to expect from these unlikely friends and partners is here: the sarcastic dialogue, the complex and unexpected plotting, the whiplash violence, and, of course, the twangy, self-aware yet self-depreciating first-person narration from Hap. But this novel has them dealing with their mortality more than any previous adventure. It’s no spoiler to say that they’re not completely finished with the beautiful but extremely deadly likes of Vanilla Ride, either.
Hap and Leonard are making mostly honest money these days assisting friend Marvin Hanson with his local private investigation business. They like the work because it often means they can worm their way into other people’s business, and maybe kick some behind and break an arm or a knee, and still be on the clock. In fact, Leonard enjoys being an operative so much, he’s taken to wearing a deerstalker cap.
Marvin brings the pair into his office to meet his new client, a woman whose son was murdered a few years ago while on a date with a girl who was killed, too. The police have let the case go cold as a random homicide, but the mother is still not satisfied. When Hap and Leonard look over the evidence, they discover two odd things: For one, the murdered girl was part of a local vampire cult; and the other is a small figure of a red devil head painted on a tree at the murder scene.
In search of a motive, Hap and Leonard follow the trail, only to learn that the other members of the vampire cult also died of mysterious, often brutal causes, and more devil heads were found near their bodies. After encountering a series of oddball suspects, including a few they previously tussled with in earlier books, the two end up on a path that leads straight to perhaps the most deadly assassin they have every met, and who they have come to call Devil Red.
Hap and Leonard have had their fair share of debilitating knock-downs before, and have almost been killed more than once. But Lansdale knows that his heroes are no spring chickens anymore, as good a show as they might still talk. Hap comments on this when, for example, he finds himself reaching for a pair of glasses along with his bathroom reading.
But Lansdale drives the point home with shotgun intensity when Hap suffers a full-on nervous breakdown after discovering a murder scene where the victim was brutally and sexually tortured. And the scenes where Hap tumbles down the abyss of his haunted memories and is slowly brought back to the surface, thanks to Leonard and Hap’s longtime live-in girlfriend, Brett, are among the most searing and unforgettable Lansdale has ever written. Hap’s wiseacre attitude and comments eventually return, but Leonard, Brett and, indeed, we readers worry if Hap is really okay.
It all comes as a disorienting shock as first, but this balancing of such dark and light moments — the danger and the humor, the swagger and the actual accomplishments, and the moral certainty in constant debate with personal doubt — has distinguished this crime series from the start. Ironically, Lansdale, with his easy-going prose so perfect for storytelling, is one of the very few authors who can consistently and effectively pull it off, even when pumping up the volume as in this work.
DEVIL RED is yet another in a long line of excellent novels from Lansdale and most highly recommended. If you somehow never followed Hap and Leonard before, you’d do well to read VANILLA RIDE before this one. Then, after you’ve finished wondering where these two no-accounts have been all your life, you can get busy enjoying all that came before. —Alan Cranis
Related posts:
- Vanilla Ride
- The Devil’s Rejects
- Friend of the Devil
- Shanna, the She-Devil: Survival of the Fittest
- The Killer / Devil on Two Sticks
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I just started rereading the Hap and Leonard series, and it’s just as good as I remembered.