Joe R. Lansdale_Hap Collins and Leonard Pine Series #1-#9 (Bad-ass Thrillers)EPUB + MOBI

Horror? Suspense? Voodoo hoodoo crime fiction? Country noir? East Texas gothic?

But definitely file 'em under "Kick Ass."

As in "these really are just great, rock 'em, sock 'em books." The two "heroes" are HAP COLLINS , a disillusioned former sixties activist and self-confessed white trash rebel, and his best bud, LEONARD PINE, a hardass black gay Vietnam vet Republican who doesn't seem to have any illusions about anything at all. These two East Texas yahoos manage to end up in some of the weirdest situations imaginable. They're not really private eyes or, to tell the truth, much of anything professionally. They're frequently out of work -- layabouts who work assorted odd jobs, anything from treasure hunting to housesitting and yet somehow, inevitably find themselves mixed up in some truly nasty business. And sometimes, they even act as (unofficial) private detectives. In Devil's Red (2012), they're reunited with their old pal Marvin Hanson, a former homicide cop (and the main character in Lansdale's very first novel, Act of Love) who's become a private investigator, and fobs off one of his cold cases onto the boys.

But whatever "job" they're working never quite seems to matter when the stories are this good.

Maybe it's a new sub-genre...the Gonzo Crime Novel. Maybe I can claim I discovered it. Or at least tagged it. Outlandish characters, lots of weaponry, both legal and illegal, rednecks, looney tunes and some real humdinger plot twists, all set to a rock'n'roll soundtrack (no soft, muted jazzbo soundtracks for these books--they're the literary equivalent to a really great rock'n'roll radio station set to eleven...or maybe twelve).

Hap and Leonard's back and forth banter is certainly not going to meet any federally-approved politically correct standards, but Hap and Leonard are great characters. The first book in the series, Savage Season (1990) really packs a wallop, reminds me of a cross between Deliverance and Straw Dogs and maybe The Big Chill, sort of a outdoorsy showdown as orchestrated by Quentin Tarantino via John Boorman, and so far, the series has shown no signs of slowing down.

But then, Joe R. Lansdale is -- not to put too fine a point on it -- simply one of the great storytellers of our time; a two-fisted gonzo writer who's never met a genre whose ass he couldn't kick. He's written over thirty novels and countless short stories, and has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites. He has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies, and has received the Edgar Award, Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan: Martial Science and its affiliate, the Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Halls of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.

Besides the Hap and Leonard stories, fans of this site out to check out his 1998 collection, Private Eye Action... As You Like It, as well as his awesome horror/detective hybrid tale "The Bleeding Shadow".

http://www.thrillingdetective.com



A rip-roaring, high-octane, Texas-sized thriller, featuring two friends, one vixen, a crew of washed-up radicals, loads of money, and bloody mayhem.Hap Collins and Leonard Pine are best friends, yet they couldn't be more different. Hap is an east Texas white-boy with a weakness for Texas women. Leonard is a gay, black Vietnam vet. Together, they steer up more commotion than a fire storm. But that's just the way they like it. So when an ex-flame of Hap's returns promising a huge score. Hap lets Leonard in on the scam, and that's when things get interesting. Chockfull of action and laughs,* ***Savage Season** is the masterpiece of dark suspense that introduced Hap and Leonard to the thriller scene. It hasn't been the same since.



Hap and Leonard return in this incredible, mad-dash thriller, loaded with crack addicts, a serial killer, and a body count. Leonard is still nursing the injuries he sustained in the duo's last wild undertaking when he learns that his Uncle Chester has passed. Hap is of course going to be there for his best friend, and when the two are cleaning up Uncle Chester's dilapidated house, they uncover a dark little secret beneath the house's rotting floor boards—a small skeleton buried in a trunk. Hap wants to call the police. Leonard, being a black man in east Texas, persuades him this is not a good idea, and together they set out to clear Chester's name on their own. The only things standing in their way is a houseful of felons, a vicious killer, and possibly themselves.



Full of savage humor, heart-stopping suspense, and a cast of characters so tough they could chew the bumper off a pickup truck, **The Two Bear Mambo*** *is classic country noir.In this rollicking, rollercoaster ride of a novel, Hap Collins and Leonard Pine take a break from their day jobs to search for Florida Grange, Leonard's drop-dead gorgeous lawyer and Hap's former lover, who has vanished in the Klan-infested East Texas town of Grovetown. Before she disappeared, Florida was digging up some dirt behind the mysterious jailhouse death of a legendary bluesman's son, who was in possession of some priceless merchandise. To Hap and Leonard, something don't smell right. With murder on their minds, Hap and Leonard set out to investigate as only they now how . . . chaotically.



Fresh from a stint on an offshore oil rig Hap arrives home in LaBorde, Texas, to find his best friend Leonard brooding over the break-up with his lover, Raul. Things get worse when Raul's new lover is found murdered and Leonard is the prime suspect. Hap sets out to clear his friends name, but there are complications in the form of a nurse with an abusive husband, a tornado, and threatening behavior from LaBorde's Chili King - not to mention more dead bodies than you can shake a stock at . . .



Hap Collins and Leonard Pine are in for an action-packed adventure when they cross paths with a towering Pentecostal preacher, a midget with a giant attitude, and a gang of bikers turned soldiers of fortune.Even though a midlife crisis just hit Hap Collins like a runaway pickup truck, he's still got his job, he knows his best friend, Leonard Pine, will always be there for him, and of course he's got his main squeeze, Brett Sawyer. Things hit a new low, however, when Brett's daughter, Tillie, who has been walking on the wrong side of the law suddenly stands in need of a rescue. It's won't be easy—it never is—but nothing is going to stop Hap and Leonard as they hit the road destined for Hootie Hoot, Oklahoma to shake things up. And with Hap and Leonard at the wheel this promises to be a wild ride.From the Trade Paperback edition.



Hap Collins, chicken plant guard, saves a young woman. However, no good deed goes unpunished when he takes his best friend Leonard on a Caribbean cruise. Misbehaving at a lobster dinner, the two are abandoned in Mexico, where Leonard is saved from armed attackers by a geriatric fisherman and his lovely daughter-currently involved with a Mexican mobster and a practicing nudist. Trying for once to stay out of other people's business, Hap returns to East Texas but is overwhelmed when he learns of the senorita's murder. Not taking it lying down, he and Leonard return to Mexico to even the score.



"There's no bullshit in a Joe Lansdale book. There's everything a good story needs, and nothing it doesn't. Joe pulls up the truck, says, 'Get in the back, we're going for a ride.'You know it might get a little scary and it might get a little crazy, but you get in, because you know in the end, it's going to be a fun ride."--Christopher Moore, *New York Times* Bestselling Author of* A Dirty Job* and* Fool*In this Texas-sized thriller, Hap Collins and Leonard Pine—best friends, freelance troublemakers, and tough guys with good intentions—find themselves in the crosshairs of the Dixie Mafia.Hap is an East Texas smart mouth with a weakness for southern women. Leonard is a gay, black veteran pining for a lost love. They’re not the makings of your typical dynamic duo, but never underestimate the power of a shared affinity for stirring up trouble and causing mayhem. When an old friend asks Leonard to rescue his daughter from an abusive, no-good drug dealer, he gladly agrees and, of course, invites Hap along for the fun. Even though the dealer may be lowly, he *is *on the bottom rung of the Dixie Mafia, and when Hap and Leonard come calling, the Mafia feels a little payback is in order. Cars crash, shotguns blast, and people die, but Hap and Leonard come out on top. Unfortunately for them, now they’re facing not only jail time but also the legendary—and lethal—Vanilla Ride, who is still out to claim the price on their heads. Full of twists and turns, gunfire and gaffes, this hilarious, rip-roaring novel will have readers turning the pages faster than a Texas tornado.



Hap Collins and Leonard Pine return in a red-hot, mayhem-fueled thriller to face a vampire cult, the Dixie Mafia, and the deadliest assassin they've ever encountered--Devil Red.

When their friend Marvin asks Hap and Leonard to look into a cold-case double murder, they're more than happy to play private investigators: they like trouble, and they especially like getting paid to find it. It turns out that both of the victims were set to inherit serious money, and one of them ran with a vampire cult. The more closely Hap and Leonard look over the crime-scene photos, the more they see, including the image of a red devil's head painted on a tree. A little research turns up a slew of murders with that same fiendish signature. And if that's not enough, Leonard has taken to wearing a deerstalker cap . . . Will this be the case that finally sends Hap over the edge?

Full up with Lansdale's trademark--whip-smart dialogue, relentless pacing, and unorthodox-to-say-the-least...



Hyenas marks the always-welcome return of Joe R. Lansdale’s most indelible fictional creations: Hap Collins and Leonard Pine. Once again, the embattled but resilient duo find themselves enmeshed in a web of danger, duplicity, and escalating mayhem. The result is a tightly compressed novella that is at once harrowing, hilarious, and utterly impossible to put down.

The story begins with a barroom brawl that is both brutal and oddly comic. The ensuing drama encompasses abduction, betrayal, robbery, and murder, ending with a lethal confrontation in an East Texas pasture. Along the way, readers are treated to moments of raucous, casually profane humor and to scenes of vivid, crisply described violence, all related in that unmistakable Lansdale voice. An essential addition to an already imposing body of work, Hyenas shows us both the author and his signature characters at their inimitable best. It doesn’t get better than this.

Hyenas also includes the bonus Hap Collins short story, “The Boy Who Became Invisible”.

From Publishers Weekly

In Lansdale's wry, casually violent novella about roughneck buddies Hap Collins (white and straight) and Leonard Pine (African-American and gay), the two knights-errant befriend a hapless fellow whose younger, weaker brother has fallen in with extremely bad company—he's just joined a gang of bank robbers whose leader is used to increasing his own share of the loot by killing the other gang members. As usual, the dialogue is deadpan tart and the action extreme but convincing. Readers will find themselves simultaneously grinning and flinching. The book also includes "The Boy Who Became Invisible," a story Hap tells about something he witnessed years before, perhaps explaining why he's inclined to stand up for people who aren't as good at defending themselves as he and Leonard grew up to be. Lansdale (Vanilla Ride) once again proves he's the East Texas master of redneck noir. (Jan. 31)
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