Jackrabbit Smile (Hap Collins and Leonard Pine Series #11)

by Joe R. Lansdale

Overview

Edgar Award-winner and fan favorite Joe R. Lansdale is back with Hap and Leonard's latest caper: investigating the disappearance of a revivalist cult leader's daughter.

Hap and Leonard are an unlikely pair-Hap, a self-proclaimed white trash rebel, and Leonard, a tough-as-nails black gay Vietnam vet and Republican-but they're the closest friend either of them has in the world. Hap is celebrating his wedding to his longtime girlfriend, Brett (who is also Hap and Leonard's boss), when their backyard barbecue is interrupted by a couple of Pentecostal white supremacists. They're not too happy to see Leonard, and no one is happy to see them, but they have a problem and only Hap and Leonard will take the case.

Judith Mulhaney's daughter, Jackrabbit, has been missing for five years. Well, she's been missing from them for five years, but she's been missing from everybody, including the local no-goods who ran with her, for a few months. Despite their misgivings about Judith and her son, Hap and Leonard take the case. It isn't long until they find themselves mixed up in a revivalist cult that believes Jesus will return flanked by an army of lizard-men — solving a murder to boot.

With Lansdale's trademark humor, whip-smart dialogue, and plenty of ass-kicking adventures to be had, you won't want to miss Hap and Leonard's latest.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316311601
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	03/26/2019
Series:	Hap Collins and Leonard Pine Series , #11
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	275,881
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of nearly four dozen novels, including Rusty Puppy, the Edgar-award winning The Bottoms, Sunset and Sawdust, and Leather Maiden. He has received nine Bram Stoker Awards, the American Mystery Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature. He lives with his family in Nacogdoches, Texas.

Editorial Reviews

"Talking dirty can be great fun, especially when the trash talkers are Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, the cutup private eyes in Joe R. Lansdale's Texas crime capers."—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

"Part of what makes this book exceptional is the way Lansdale portrays the long legacy of race and class discrimination as the characters' lived experience. . . . Lansdale is one of a kind, with a deceptively folksy and funny voice that hides real darkness; fans of the eponymous SundanceTV series will be delighted to find the books are even better."—Booklist (starred review)

"Raucous . . . As always, Lansdale provides a wild, fun ride with an astute eye on social issues."—Publishers Weekly

"Fans of the books and Sundance TV series will eagerly follow the men through their latest, politically timely hullabaloo."—Library Journal

"A companionable, enjoyable, and profane series . . . Its pleasures are still welcome."—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

For such a freewheeling stylist, Lansdale can write a sensitive obituary for a "confused and tortured soul" like [Jackie's father] Sebastian, as well as boisterous action scenes for his irrepressible leads. And he has compassion for places like Hell's Half Mile, "a line of honky-tonks full of drunken patrons trying to wash down poverty, bad marriages and gone-to-hell children."

The New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio

01/29/2018
Hap Collins and his longtime love, Brett Sawyer, have finally decided to tie the knot in Edgar-winner Lansdale’s raucous 13th Hap and Leonard novel (after 2017’s Rusty Puppy), but they’ve barely gotten the burgers and hot dogs on the grill for their East Texas–style wedding party when two uninvited guests arrive. The heavily tattooed man, Thomas Mulhaney, wears a white pride T-shirt, and his mother, Judith, looks to be out of backwoods Pentecostal central casting. Hap’s best friend, Leonard Pine, a black Republican and Vietnam vet, prepares to escort them off the property in his usual inimitable way. But then the pair ask if they can hire the detectives to look into the disappearance of Thomas’s sister, Jackie. Hap and Leonard hold their noses and agree to investigate. The trail leads them to the nearby town where Jackie, an accounting whiz with strange views on interdimensional travel, was last seen. There they meet a hog farmer known as Professor, who has plans of creating a segregated white utopia aided by assorted local yokels and a pair of lethal twin brothers. As always, Lansdale provides a wild, fun ride with an astute eye on social issues. Agent: Danny Baror, Baror International. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

2018-02-20
A search for a missing girl is the spark that sets off the fireworks in the latest noir adventures of the Texas investigators Hap and Leonard.The comic volatility of Hap and Leonard's partnership is that they are, respectively, white-black, straight-gay, liberal-conservative. This new installation begins with Hap and his longtime girlfriend, Brett, who also happens to own the detective agency he and Leonard work for, getting hitched and throwing a backyard barbecue by way of celebration. The party is interrupted by unwelcome visitors, a skinny young white supremacist and his ailing mother. It seems their respective sister and daughter has gone missing, and they want Hap to find her. After becoming disconcerted to learn that Leonard is not the boy who cleans up but will be an equal partner in the search, they nonetheless agree to hire the pair for the job. The search takes Hap and Leonard to Hap's small Texas hometown, which, he is disturbed to learn, is being slowly bought up by a slick white supremacist leader who sends his thugs, some of them Hap's old high school acquaintances, to keep tabs on the pair's every move. By now the Hap and Leonard series has settled into an odd mixture of brutality and sentimentality. You can be sure, for instance, that a pit bull used for fighting purposes will be spirited away in the middle of the night to a more loving home, where his happy inner-canine slob can flourish. You can also be sure that, particularly if Leonard has anything to do with it, revenge will be meted out without a trace of pity or regret. This entry feels a mite quick, even its volatility managed and thus kind of a safer bet than the earlier entries. But it remains a companionable, enjoyable, and profane series.Familiarity has worn down the edge in this series, but its pleasures are still welcome.

Kirkus Reviews