Joe R. Lansdale
Vanilla Ride
Random House, 2009, $24.95
It had been nearly a decade since the last Hap & Leonard novel, so it was good to catch up with them again. The last one, Captains Outrageous, occasionally suffered from having too many people on stage at the same time, which is why it was a good thing that Leonard’s boyfriend remained off-stage for this one. Hap and Leonard retrieve their old friend Marvin Hanson’s daughter from the clutches of a drug-dealer, only to have the Dixie Mafia come down on their heads. A pretty hefty body count ensues. I would rank this in about the middle of the Hap & Leonard novels, not as good as Mucho Mojo or The Two-Bear Mambo, but as good or better than the rest. (And just in case you didn’t know, I have a ton of Lansdale (most of it signed) over on the Lame Excuse Books page.)