A Hap and Leonard Novel
I’d forgotten that Lansdale books are very funny!
The story
Hap (the white guy) is manning the office by himself while Leonard (the gay black guy) is off in Houston checking out a fellow for a new boyfriend.
A nice black lady with a cavernous purse comes in to hire them. We get jokes about how big the purse is.
There was the usual racial dance where she’s was hoping to talk to the black guy, but when she gets to the office it’s the white guy.
She’s uneasy about is, but Hap convinces her to go for it because she remembered him from an incident at the school last year where he did something cool!
Hap is the team’s diplomat. Leonard is permanently cranky and ready to get into it with anyone.
The names in this book are ridiculuos.
- The very corrupt police detective is called Coldpoint.
- His sidekick is Officer Sheerfault.
- The godforsaken little town they operate in is called Camp Rapture.
The corrupt cops do their dirty work at an abandoned saw mill (the Sawmill) where they throw the bodies in the disgusting mill pond. The book title Rusty Puppy alludes to what he decaying sawdust makes the bodies look like if they bob to the surface.
Hap’s got a girlfriend now (Brett). Their daughter (Chance) lives with them!
The plot in a nutshell is that the Camp Rapture is an awful town, with a cadre of awful police that to evil things.
A cute black girl (Charm) takes pictures where she shouldn’t, pretty sunset pictures at the Sawmill. She gets arrested by Sheerfault for no good reason other than she’s cute and vulnerable. He molests her in jail.
Her brother (Jamar) starts nosing around and gets himself killed. That’s what Hap and Leonard are investigating.
It’s a pretty fun book. Not so fun that I want to spend a lot of time writing a full play-by-play as I have done for other books.
- Our heroes nose around the project where Jamar was last seen.
- They piss off the local group of shiftless teenagers.
- Our heroes are better at fighting than the teens.
- The teens re-appear later as semi-good guys.
- A guy named Timpson is involved.
- Hap and Leonard talked to him once, but when they went back he’s been beat to death by the police!
- Hap and Leonard have stirred up enough s–t that they are beaten by the police.
- Leonard meets a cop called Marvin. By mysterious gay radar they detect that each is gay. They are seeing each other 20 pages later.
- Marvin is an honest cop in a different department.
A lot energy was expended, but at the end everybody ends up back at the Sawmill, for a series of Texas-style gladiator matches, which of course include Hap and Leonard, who turn out to still be pretty good fighters in their unique ways.
Coldpoint is arrested (I think!). But Sheerfault gets it in a memorable way by eacaping in his vintage Cadillac but losing control after running over a couple of people and sinking in the pond with his foot still stuck in the car.