Hap and Leonard by Joe R. Lansdale

Published by Tachyon Publications on March 1, 2016

Joe Lansdale has written eight or nine novels featuring the characters Hap Collins and Leonard Pine. Hap provides the narrative voice. He's sort of an East Texas liberal who has been on a long and unsuccessful quest to find himself. His buddy, Leonard Pine, is a black, gay conservative who has anger management issues. Whether Hap and Leonard have a knack for finding trouble or whether trouble finds them is a question they often ponder.

Hap and Leonard are now appearing in a series on Sundance TV. Apparently the episodes can be streamed online. I haven't done that yet due to my lousy internet service but I'll get around to it eventually. I assume that this collection of Hap and Leonard short stories was released in anticipation of the Sundance show.

A couple of the short stories in the volume are billed as novellas. I’m not sure they’re long enough to qualify as novellas rather than long short stories. The entire volume is relatively short, but most of the stories are entertaining, as you would expect from Joe Lansdale.

The first long story is “Hyenas.” A young man looking for someone to help him prevent his brother from committing a robbery has the misfortune of meeting the wrong guys before he finds Hap and Leonard. A couple of violent confrontations later and the problem is solved. This is a fun, straightforward story that is enlivened by Lansdale’s trademark wit.

“Veil’s Visit” is co-authored with Andrew Vachss. The story blends Vachss’ trademark darkness with Lansdale’s trademark humor. The darkness (involving kids, another Vachss trademark) comes at the beginning but the story becomes cheerier as it progresses. Veil is a lawyer and an old friend of Hap. He travels to Texas to help out Leonard, who is charged with burning down a crack house. Again. The trial is a masterpiece of wit and theatrics. It’s also deliciously funny.

“Death by Chili” is a very short story that was written as a promotional giveaway. Leonard solves the mystery of how a person died. The chili recipe at the end is more amusing than the story.

“Dead Aim” is the best story in the collection. Hap and Leonard are asked to help out a woman whose husband is threatening her. That problem takes a couple of twists before turning into a bunch of new problems … the kind that Hap and Leonard like to solve with an axe handle, a few bullets, and nonstop banter.

In “The Boy Who Became Invisible,” Hap recalls an incident from his childhood. This is a very short, very serious story, quite unlike the other entries. Also from his younger days, Hap explains how he got to know Leonard in “Not Our Kind.” The story features some of the usual Hap and Leonard banter, but its subject matter -- racism and homophobia -- give it a serious edge.

“Bent Twig” is a fairly predictable story about Hap’s efforts to find the drug-addled daughter of his girlfriend, who regularly gets into trouble and disappears. The plot gains some zip toward the end, and the snappy dialog and amusing moments that characterize Hap and Leonard stories make it worth reading.

Rounding out the collection is Lansdale’s brief interview of Hap and Leonard. It comes across as filler. Lansdale also devotes a few pages to explaining how and when he penned the various Hap and Leonard novels and stories.

On the whole, this collection is something that Hap and Leonard fans (or, more generally, Lansdale fans) will appreciate. It doesn’t consistently showcase Lansdale at his best, but “Hyenas” and “Dead Aim” are worth the price of the volume.

RECOMMENDED

Condor in the Stacks by James Grady and The Little Men by Megan Abbott

MysteriousPress.com is publishing (in digital form) a series of stand-alone stories by popular crime authors in which books, bookstores, libraries, or manuscripts play a central role.  I don't usually review individual short stories, but I'm making an exception for the Bibliomysteries series because the concept is interesting and the authors are well known.

"Condor in the Stacks" by James Grady was published digitally on February 23, 2016.

Condor fans know from reading Last Days of the Condor that the Condor, sometimes known as Vin, was heavily medicated and given a (supposedly) safe and undemanding job at the Library of Congress, sorting books into bins for reshelving and recycling. Vin thinks pretty much all books should be saved. That attitude makes him well suited for the Bibliomysteries series.

Vin tries to kick back his sedation long enough to help a library employee named Kim who thinks she is being stalked. Meanwhile, he tries to solve the puzzle of why he packed seven coffins full of books for recycling but nine coffins are being hauled away.

The plot is beyond far-fetched and it isn’t fully developed. I'm not sure it even makes sense. Still, it entertained me. I liked the story, but not nearly as much as I liked the last Condor novel, which had a depth of character and intricacy of plot that can be difficult to achieve in a short story. I probably would not recommend this story to readers who did not read and enjoy Last Days of the Condor.

The text of the story mentions or alludes to about a dozen authors. James Grady acknowledges them at the end, which is helpful for readers who recognize, but can’t quite place, an allusion. I am one of the readers who benefitted from reading the acknowledgements.

Judging from Amazon reviews, some readers are turned off by Grady’s writing style, which is far from conventional. Odd punctuation, sentence fragments, and stream of consciousness sometimes take over the narrative. The frenzied, off-kilter style reflects Vin’s shaky mental status. I like it for that reason but I realize that it puts off readers who are looking for straight-forward prose. If you are one of those, be warned that this might not be the story for you.

RECOMMENDED

"The Little Men" by Megan Abbott was published digitally on September 15, 2015

In 1953, Penny went to Hollywood to pursue her dream of fame. Like most wannabe actresses, she found a less satisfying life that the one she pursued. At night, she consoles herself with the books that came with a surprisingly affordable bungalow that she rents in the canyon. Her neighbors soon reveal that the rent is affordable because nobody wants to rent the bungalow where the bookseller killed himself. Or did he?

This is a story of bad dreams and spooky nocturnal noises and shadows on the walls. A mystery with the flavor of a horror story. Like Psycho, the story asks the reader to divine the secrets of a spooky place. Are the horrors that Penny experiences real or imagined?

A well-crafted story, “Little Men” creates a visceral atmosphere and gives flesh to its characters. The story resolves with a couple of unexpected twists. Most of the stories in this series have been quite good, and this one is no exception.

RECOMMENDED

We Install and Other Stories by Harry Turtledove

Published by Open Road Media on August 25, 2015

I have a mixed, but generally positive, reaction to this collection. Harry Turtledove is known for his alternative histories but this volume showcases his range as a science fiction writer. Readers expecting alternative histories might be disappointed, since none of those are represented here, although history does play a role in a couple of the stories.

Sort of the flip side of alternate history, “Drang von Osten” is a story of the future, told from a German soldier’s point of view as his army (combined with various Scandanavian forces) fights a campaign against Soviet Russians. If you’ve read any of the books that Turtledove has set in a time of war, this story is fairly typical in terms of content and style. The ending comes as something of a surprise, perhaps because it is jarringly out-of-the-blue.

In “Hoxbomb,” humans and an alien race who are grudgingly sharing a world find the need to conduct a joint criminal investigation. The aliens are truly alien, cleverly so. They are different from humans in most significant ways but with enough similarities to make productive interaction possible.

The longest and best story, “Down in the Bottomlands,” is a fun blend of the mystery and spy genres with modest elements of science fiction. A tour guide who shows tourists the sea bottom of a long-dry seabed finds himself in the middle of a conspiracy to reignite a war between the various political divisions on his world.

“Father of the Groom” is about a mad scientist who literally turns a bride into Bridezilla. “We Install” is about a salesman who installs solar systems (as opposed to solar power systems). Both stories are cute but trivial.

“Under St. Peter’s” explains the resurrection of Jesus in a clever way that people of a religious bent might find sacrilegious. I thought it was amusing. “It’s the End of the World as We Know It, and We Feel Fine” imagines domesticating humans in the way that Balyaev domesticated foxes. I liked the story but the style is a little too author-intrusive for my taste.

Turtledove’s attempt at something that isn’t science fiction, “Logan’s Law” (“the good ones are already taken”) is a bland story about a guy who is happy because he got laid …. duh. “Birdwitching” is about a witch who goes birding. Not my kind of story.

A few nonfiction pieces add to the page count, but not to the quality of the volume. In short, while the stories are uneven, the best of the bunch are quite good, and they make the collection worth reading.

RECOMMENDED

The Book of the Lion by Thomas Perry

Published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road on July 14, 2015

This is another entry in Mysterious Press’ Bibliomystery series of short stories that relate to books, bookstores, libraries, or manuscripts. Joyce Carol Oates, Jeffrey Deaver, and a number of other popular crime writers have contributed to the series.

A professor who is a leading expert on Chaucer gets a call from a mysterious stranger who claims to possess the only existing manuscript of Chaucer’s Book of the Lion. The manuscript is thought to have been lost, or possibly it never existed. Is its sudden appearance a hoax? A prank? A fraud?

Rather than offering to sell the manuscript, as a con artist might, the mysterious man has another scheme in mind. Of course, the scheme involves money. With the help of a wealthy friend who has a literary bent, the professor strives to learn the truth about the manuscript.

Thomas Perry peppers the story with snippets of history from the Middle Ages. The characters and tidbits about Chaucer’s works and medieval history make the background more interesting than the plot, which is fun but leads to an unsurprising ending. Still, the fast-moving story is a worthy entry in the series.

RECOMMENDED

Writers of the Future vol. 31, edited by David Farland

Published by Galaxy Press on May 4, 2015

If these are the writers of the future, I'll stick to the writers of the past. The stories are chosen from the "L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future" contest. David Farland, who judges the contest, calls them "gleaming and flawless." I'd call most of them "not quite ready to be published."

One of the few highlights in this volume is Auston Habershaw's "A Revolutionary's Guide to Practical Conjuration." It tells an engaging story about the lessons learned by a young man who endeavors to improve a dark world by mastering a book of magic that is also a magical book.

"Switch" by Steve Pantazis is a direct-link-between-mind-and-internet story about a cop who investigates a homicide. The killer took a drug called Switch that slows the perception of time, enhancing the ability to react quickly. The cop uses it too, which is the only interesting thing about the cop. The story is full of clichéd ideas and it drags on too long before leading to a predictable climax.

"The God Whisperer" by Daniel J. Davis is an amusing but half-formed story about a guy who enlists the help of a "god trainer" to help him cope with an egocentric god of war and strife who lives in his back yard. Set in a future Vietnam, Tim Napper's "Twelve Minutes to Viet Quang" would be an excellent first chapter about a heroine who stands up to an oppressive society, but it is insubstantial as a stand-alone story.

Childbirth, childcare, and the blossoming (or not) of womanhood are the focus of "Stars that Make Dark Heaven Light" by Sharon Joss. The theme of socially mandated copulation has been done before, and better, although the female who must copulate has gills, which unevolved humans might regard as a turn-off. Some of the story, about bonding with brainy alien bugs that other colonists view as a threat, is mildly interesting, but too much of the story consists of starry-eyed romantic musings that fans of romance fiction might find more appealing than I did. The ending is just cheesy.

Krystal Claxton's "Planar Ghosts" is a post-apocalyptic story. A character named Pup has a friend named Ghost who is invisible to others but "faintly purple" to Pup. Maybe Ghost isn't really a ghost but the explanation of Ghost's existence is, like the rest of the story, contrived. As an adventure story, it isn't bad, but it could have been better.

"Between Screens" by Zach Chapman has a young nerdy guy skipping around the universe with the hot girl who gives him his first kiss. If you aren't a young nerdy guy who has fantasies about getting laid by a hot girl, you can skip this story without missing anything. "Half Past" by Samantha Murray tells of a girl who must leave her imaginary friends, except they aren't imaginary since they were created by magic during moments of intense emotion. It isn't my kind of story but it does take a surprisingly clever twist. If you like stories like this, it isn't a bad one.

Martin L. Shoemaker's "Unrefined" is an undistinguished "who sabotaged my nuclear reactor?" story, which might have made for a good plot if the story hadn't gone in a completely different and tragically dull direction. "Purposes Made for Alien Minds" by Scott R. Parkin is written in sentences of exactly five words. Gimmick gets old really fast.

"The Graver" by Amy M. Hughes is about people who absorb memories of the dead. That's a concept I've seen before. The story isn't bad until it buries its drama in a lot of silliness about releasing a dead person's soul. Kary English's "Poseidon's Eyes" is a mundane story about spirits that failed to hold my interest.

Mental health counseling for people who do strange things under stress (like turning into smoke, becoming invisible, or increasing in mass and weight) is the subject of Michael T. Banker's "Wisteria Melancholy". Had it been played for laughs, this could have been a great story, but the author took the subject matter more seriously than I did.

L. Ron Hubbard is too dead to be considered a writer of the future but the volume includes a story and an essay about art that he wrote when he was still alive. I guess that's because his name is on the cover. Larry Niven, Orson Scott Card, and Kevin J. Anderson are not dead, but a Card essay and stories by Niven and Anderson (Anderson's is co-written with his wife) are also featured here for reasons I cannot imagine, unless the intent is to give the volume a sense of professionalism by adding writers of the past. Each story has an illustration and there's an article about illustrators of the future and another on "the direction of art" that both seem to serve as page-fillers.

NOT RECOMMENDED